When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

I always believe it's better to have 30 imaginations working on a project, rather than one imagination telling the other 29 what to do.

One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.

I've just taken the decision that I'm going to now go full time back into the theater.

I've experienced a private doubt, something that I've kept deeply inside, and then eventually delivered a piece of work that people responded to with huge enthusiasm.