David Lan: Audience's experience at the Young Vic

I guess the simplest way of saying it is that what I' m interested in as the artistic director of the company is the shows that we create and the relationship between those shows and the audience. Everything we do is about the moment when you bring the show and the audience together and that' s the only thing that matters. It' s the coming together of one group of people who have prepared something and another group of people who are prepared to receive that, whatever it is, whatever that show is. So it' s all about that moment and the only thing that matters is what happens in that moment. It' s nothing to do with literature; it' s nothing to do with what happens in universities and the study of plays. It' s just about experience. So we' re very interested here in values of performance. We think of what we do not as plays, but as shows. I' m as interested in the way in which a play is presented to an audience, is directed, is conceived, is given to an audience as I am in the play itself. Which is not to say that we don' t think writers are important.

Writers of course are tremendously important, in fact writers are the most important thing of course they are we know that. But there' s no point in having a wonderfully imaginative piece of writing if the plays not wonderfully produced. By produced I don' t just mean how it' s directed, but also the relationship between the show and the building within which it happens, the way the audience is received into the theatre. Everything about experience, everything that happens when the audience comes into the building. I think, I' m not saying that we are unique in this, not by any means; I mean most people, if not everybody, think in these terms. But we are particularly interested in the total experience.