The theater is a communal experience, and whatever the emotional connection between an audience member and the actors onstage, it ripples through the whole audience. Part of the fun of the play is being a part of that audience.

I find it very invigorating having Ken Lonergan, who's an established, Pulitzer-nominated playwright doing Howards End, or Chris Hampton who's won an Oscar writing a TV series, or having an actor like Mark Rylance, who is probably England's leading theater actor, in the lead in Wolf Hall.

When I did Nicholas Nickelby originally, that was a co-production between the new Channel 4, Polygram in Europe and Mobil Oil in America, and I have been involved in working on co-productions for years on both sides of the Atlantic and that's very much at the core of what Playground is doing. So marrying, finding projects that can be co-produced and can be produced using the very best talent from both sides of the Atlantic that's absolutely right at the center of what Playground is doing.

If the play works in an emotional and engaging way purely from what's on the page, then what's on the stage will be the icing on the cake. If the play didn't work as a play on its own terms, none of the magic, none of the special effects or theatricality of it all, would add up to anything.

I think where Playground is heading is deeper into that marriage between stage, film and television, with the increasing number of people in the film business working in television, obviously something that we were very influential in starting and doing at HBO. And I think that that's the focus of where I see the company moving forward, continuing to explore that intersection of all that talent.

My principal focus is finding great dramas.

The theater is a communal experience, and whatever the emotional connection between an audience member and the actors onstage, it ripples through the whole audience. Part of the fun of the play is being a part of that audience.