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Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

When I meet someone who I really admire, I enjoy nothing more than trying to connect with them and asking them about their career. I want to know who the people are behind the performances and how they relate to their performances. But it's maybe not as novel as it once was.

There is an audience for every play; it's just that sometimes it can't wait long enough to find it.

A good play puts the audience through a certain ordeal.

There's nothing like a play. It's so immediate and every performance is different. As an actor, you have the most control over what the audience is seeing.

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.

Above all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of the play.

I'm not sure plays tell people anything. I think plays include an audience in an experience that is happening in that moment, and that's the specialness. What people take away has almost as much to do with what they bring as what we do.

People say, 'How can you stay in a play for a long time?' I say, 'The audience is never the same.'