I am, to be quite honest, sick of hero stories.

I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.

In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.

Limitations force you to find the essence of what you want to say, which is one of the most important things to know for an artist.

I've had male executives say that my lead character was unlikable because she slept with a lot of guys.

I use cinematic things in a theatrical way on stage, and in film I use theatrical techniques in a cinematic way.

When we were kids, you picked up a little paper and put it on a stick; and when you waved it back and forth, you understood the power of air underneath the wings. In that way, a child begins to understand abstraction, poetry, metaphor, symbolism. You play with the materials you have and use your imagination to make them into something else. That what's so sad about having everything on a little screen - it's not physical and dimensional, and that seems backward.