First and foremost you read the play and I always wait for that initial reaction to it and I have to be emotionally moved in someway by the piece. I' ve got better at working out what that actually means - its not that I' ve just got to do this play - it' s sometimes just well this is really important and it' s moved me in a different kind of way. When I was younger it was much more bigger and brash and you know. So I would read it, and once I know that there' s something that it' s saying to me, or moving me in some way, then I know that the chances are I might be able to do something in order for it to work for an audience. So you read it a couple of times, then you start to think about who could be in it. You also think at the same time what its going to look like, so you start talking to your designer as soon as possible really and start throwing ideas around. Sometimes its just, I don' t know, talking about colours or shapes or whatever, but I' m not a designer so I don' t have to worry about the ultimate thing, all I have to say is whether I like it or not and what I would change. So as I say, it is the designer and the casting and then you think about the rest of your crew as well - your lighting designer - because all of those things play such a huge part in telling the whole piece.

I think there are more and more casting directors now. Certainly when I was starting out you ended up casting shows yourself. I really like the fact that there are casting directors out there who kind of bring something else to hopefully expand your mind. Even with the best will in the world there'll be the most obvious person that you should have thought of that because it is up to you, you don't. You know, it's like organising a party and thinking 'I'm going to invite all my friends'and then your bestest friend in the whole wide world you've forgotten because, you know, it just happens. So for me it's a great part of that process, and I guess really what it is again when the casting directors read it, you've read the play, you both sit down and talk about what it is. You talk about the characters and therefore you start to get a picture of who could possibly play that part. And then you know you might have varying things; you know it might be that they think I don't they should be at least six foot tall'I imagine him as very tall slim man.' I might imagine them as someone shorter and wider, so you know we kind of start to have those kind of debates. And then you start to talk about who you think is good, regardless of what they look like. So it's a combination of all those things. Then nine times out of ten you sit and meet them and think, 'hmm got that wrong.' Or you think 'oh that was fantastic, we were spot on.' So you know it really is, it kind of shifts and moves the whole time.

I'm one of those directors who'll try anything once - at least once. Which means that they must try at least once one of my suggestions, or all of my suggestions in fact. So I quite like to have a kind of a much more collective way of working certainly in the rehearsal room, because I don't see the point of having selected these people, and then not give them a chance to kind of go them go 'well I had this idea about this character.' It might differ completely to mine, and then the skill of what I do is how I get them around to my way of thinking. But it might be that it works completely. So that's what I love, I love the fact that the rehearsal room is a play room and we can try things out.

For me this is another part of the process that I absolutely love: the technical rehearsal where, for the first time, you get to look at the set. I never go and look at it before; when it's going in I don't look at it then. I don't want to look at the costumes, nothing. I wait until the first day of the technical rehearsal when it's all up and we've got some lights, and we start to look at painting the picture really. It's like doing a film I suppose in a way, except you've got live people and they're going to do it every night, rather than do it then print it. So I find it really exciting and it's quite slow, generally quite slow, because you know you might have to repeat the same thing over and over again as you get the actor to that position and you want the lights on them in that particular way or there might be a problem with the costume. It might just not work at all so then they have to go off and do something else, or there might be something not quite right with the set, so we know that we'll keep going for now but that is going to have to be repainted or changed. So it's how you get the whole picture that the audience comes in to see finally, that process, and it's just fantastic, I love it. And a lot of people say, and I've heard actors say all the time, 'Oh, I hate techs.' Why? Because this is when you are going to get everything put together and you're going to know how fabulous you all are. And it's because they have stop and start and so it's quite frustrating for them. When I work with young actors I say to them 'don't buy this myth about techs being horrible, they're brilliant. Use the time well.' If you know you haven't got much to do and you're in danger of driving yourself mad, get a book, listen to music, do whatever you need to do, but enjoy the tech, because it's brilliant.

Another part of the process that I absolutely love, which is kind of just before you open if you're fortunate enough, and that's to have previews. Sometimes its just one and sometimes, depending on where you are, you might have five or more. And in the previews I always say to the actors, I'm going to keep working through the previews, so I might change things. And normally, I'd say nine times out of ten, I do change things. Partly because I'm still trying things out and I don't know how it's going to work. Also, it's the first time that an audience will have seen it. And so you kind of start to get - not that your going with you know, oh if the audience laughed at that bit then I have to keep that bit - not that at all. It's much more about the look of it, and the feel of it, and whether or not those moments that you hoped for worked. Comedy is very difficult because you know one night they might laugh at one thing and another night they laugh at something else. So you can't really use the audience too much for that. But there's other things that you can get a feel for as you watch and you watch them watching.

I would go and see the play about once or twice a week once it's opened. I know that if I've laid the foundations right I kind of have to let them get on with it and start to really make it their own. So I can't really interfere too much with what they're doing because they're going through a process of getting used to playing it every night and feeling different moments. I mean if they do something radically different like I've directed them to come through a door and they come through a window then we've got a problem. But generally speaking there are no problems because it is still part of an organic process. So I'll probably go and see it once a week and I usually ask them what they think, 'how do you think it's going?'