I got into the theatre as a very young person; I got interested when I was about 11, 12 in conjuring. I started as a kid doing magic shows for kid' s parties, I hate to think what they were actually like, but at the time they seemed really rather brilliant. I started working with a puppet company, a marionette company, sort of semi-professional company and then I moved to another totally professional marionette company that I was working with in my holidays. Then I started working in a local theatre, the university theatre had a very good workshop and I used to go and work there in the holidays painting sets and things. What I really wanted to do was be an actor and when I left school I trained as an actor for a couple of years at the university in Cape Town and then I started writing plays. I realised pretty quickly I didn' t really want to act, actually I' d quite like to act now, but then I realised I didn' t really want to do it. I was writing plays and I came to England, for various reasons, but one of the reasons I came was because - we' re now talking about the early 70s - and the focus of - I mean there are two big in European theatre - in the English speaking theatre the focus is either London or New York. I came to London. I did various other things as well, I trained as a social anthropologist and I did fieldwork, and so on and I did that for a number of years. But I continued writing for theatre.
I was very lucky because when I was really quite young - my early 20s - my plays were picked up by the Royal Court, done in the theatre upstairs and the main house at the Royal Court while I was working as an academic and doing all that. Then I finished the academic work and I was still writing in the theatre and I started working in television, mostly documentaries, and so on mostly writing them and directing them a little bit. And then found my way back to what I' d always wanted to do, which was directing in the theatre. Then ridiculously quickly slightly alarmingly quickly, after I started directing I got the job of running this place and I' ve really just been doing that ever since.
