Interview with Tim Supple, director of A Midsummer Night's Dream

Interviewer: Another thing I was excited by was the variations in the cast. What considerations did you have and how exciting and how challenging was it selecting them from different parts of India given the range of personalities, looks and abilities?

Tim: Sure, I mean the process of choosing the cast was very important in the process of making the play. I took a long time over it. I travelled for over a year, I met many many people, I watched people' s work, and I worked with people for a long time before casting them, days, weeks sometimes. And I put people together in different ways until I discovered who it was that I needed to work with. But I asked... in the end it was three things that really made the difference. First of all people had to excite me, their performance had to excite me of course. Secondly, they had to be right for the part, I mean obviously in the end I couldn' t cast anybody unless they had a role to play. And thirdly I had to feel that their spirit was positive and could be flexible enough to work with people over a long period of time, there' s no room for people of negative spirit, or strongly egotistical approach to performance. So these were the three things in the end. The process of casting was one of the main stages along the journey of making the production.