Soundbite and slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole. The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need of control than the economic variety.

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.

I so wanted to perform, and I grasped every opportunity.

In a way, I have to have a dictatorship. I can't be told that I'm wrong. That conflicts with what I was saying earlier about listening. It isn't to do with receiving criticism and responding to other views, it's who has that last decision.

In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work.

A lot of performing instincts are involved in the business of direction, but so is analysis and having a sense of literature.