Interviewer: Can you tell me please, your approach to directing and particularly with this play, how you approached it?

Janet: Well in the past few years I' ve been working at Kali Theatre Company, so it' s a new writing company so the way I approach it is always obviously via the text, but very much in exploring the text and in most cases the plays that we do are first time writers.So the first week or ten days of rehearsal is usually always about sorting out the story, about sorting out characters' intentions, and there' s an awful lot of re-writing usually as well that goes on.So the way I approach directing a new piece is very different to directing a piece that' s been tried and tested, if you like. So, a great deal of time is spent sorting out the script and actioning the script. I like to do very detailed work with the actors on their intentions, objectives, their actions, that' s the way that I approach new writing. So, lots of head-in-script work!

Interviewer: Is there one particular scene in the play that you found particularly challenging?

Janet: The end of act 1, which I' ve come to call ' The Wasteland scene' originally was set, in the text is set on a street corner in Birmingham, and just wasn' t working for me having this kind of scene in the middle of a high-street in Birmingham it just wasn' t working for me and also the state that Tariq was in, and so we had a morning of experimentation where we chucked things around and did lots of improv and the result of that is the scene that we have, that I call ' The Wasteland scene' , which I' m really proud of. I think it' s a really wonderful dramatic touch to a piece of very realistic writing.

Interviewer: I noticed from the play text that you did your degree in textile design in Glasgow, where in Glasgow was that?

Matthew: At Glasgow School of Art.

Interviewer: And with this textile design degree did you specifically do it to go into the theatre or did you have plans to do interior design or another profession?

Matthew: I originally worked as a textile designer for quite a few years before I went into theatre.

Interviewer: And what made you enter the theatre after that?

Matthew: After working in the industry part of it for a while, I realised I wanted to do something more artistic, so parts of the theatre seem to embody lots of things I was interested in.

Interviewer: And did you start working with theatres doing that in Glasgow or did you...?

Matthew: I did a small education tour in Glasgow and then I started to teach myself how to make models, and how to design, and then after that I got a bursary from the Arts Council, so went to work in a theatre for a year.

Interviewer: And do you find working with both set design, making models and costume to be compatible to work well together, or that it needs to be done to be a total work of art as costume and set design or...?

Matthew: I find doing set and costume really important because quite often I' m working with colours to try and create a palate so being in control of both of them means I can control what' s seen.

Interviewer: One less person in the mix.

Matthew: Exactly.

Interviewer: And have you always worked like that on all the shows...?

Matthew: Yeah, yeah I' ve always done both.

Interviewer: Lucky for you!

Matthew:Yeah!

Interviewer: What is the politics behind Asian theatre in Britain particularly?

Jatinder: I think the politics really of Asian theatre stems from a report written in 1976 called ' The Art Britain Ignores' . This is Naseem Khan' s seminal report which established a case for public subsidy to extend to ethnic minorities who were also practising the arts. I think 30 years on, that impulse has not lessened the need to recognise the arts that are happening, if you like, on the fringes of the mainstream. We are using different terms, we are now talking about accessing, making theatre accessible to communities that may not be accessing theatre. The terms differ over the years, but the impulse remains, I think, very clear. From that the politics is two-fold. One side of it is the need to integrate these varieties of voices and imaginations into if you like, the great British mainstream. That' s sort of one side of it. The other side of it is a phrase that a journalist in the late 70' s used, called ' Finding a Voice' . I think that that is an impulse that' s there in every generation exacerbated perhaps in the post-war period when it happens also to be an immigrant generation. Then the need to find your own voice is made more acute because you don' t see the voice around you, as a general voice, general part of the theatre fabric, since we' re talking about the theatre. So I think that those are the two sorts of impulses, political impulses behind it. And it seems to me that that project has not only not lessened, rather that political imperative has not lessened in three decades, but perhaps has become more acute. Ironically that in some ways, by the kinds of policies pursued by the State in terms of positive support for ethnic minorities in the arts. Ironically it seems to me that we are pretty close to having established two tiers of arts in the country. So, kind of cultural separatism is, I think, just about discernable in the country. It' s not formalised. But it seems to me, the best way to illustrate this is that several years ago I asked a theatre reviewer from one of our major dailies why he came to see the work of companies like us. In other words what I asked him was that, does he come because it' s this particular company, it' s a work that he knows, likes the work and so on, or does he come because its an Asian company, it' s a Black company, it' s an ethnic minority company. Now bearing in mind this is a reviewer who had seen by now about 10 different productions of ours, and he was the only one honest enough to admit that actually he comes because it' s black work. My art is immaterial in this. I could be doing trashy work, in terms of aesthetically trashy work. I could be doing aesthetically stunning work, it makes no difference. Only thing that' s important is how is it ethnically, and therefore politically significant. That was a salutary lesson or insight. And I' m not sure if I were to ask the same question of reviewers today, that that impulse would have changed much.