Often during rehearsals, I catch myself thinking, 'God, this is hard. Why am I always choosing such difficult plays to put on?'
The less subsidy we have, the more the 'producers' take over, and the 'bottom line' becomes the raison d'etre. That's quite an unappealing landscape for artists.
When I was a kid, I never spoke. I would sit under a table and not speak to anybody. No words for years.
With everything I do, there always seems to be a massive risk involved.
I felt like that growing up - that I didn't have a voice.
My dad had a big influence on me, and although I was never very bright at school, I used to love philosophising with him about big universal things - and I think that's what directing is.
I'm quite unusual in directing terms: I'm a woman. I'm quite a girly girl. I was never academic.
I didn't want to just be remembered for 'War Horse.'
There's a certain type of theatre that I haven't got any time for at all - established, boring, same-old stuff without any reason or passion. There's quite a lot of it about, and it motivates me to try to do something different, something risky, raw, ugly, and challenging.
I hope that subsidised theatres continue to be rewarded for the wonder of talent they provide to this industry, on stage and off.
Directors have this mask of being in control and in charge, but underneath, I'm terrified.
We're always steered towards what is good in the canon by a male perspective. I like to do plays with a female protagonist who finds her way through. My way is unusual.
I always wanted to beat my own path.
I suppose that I'm excited by exciting theater. It takes a risk to show us the world in a new way.
Horses are wild animals, essentially, and they're not there to do what humans want them to - they can be browbeaten or cajoled or trained, but they don't hear English; they're not obedient most of the time.
'War Horse' is just an extraordinary being.
Whether you're a man or a woman, life can be very, very difficult and confusing and desperate, and it's life-enhancing to know that somehow, there is a way through it.
Some directors have the gift of the gab, but I don't.
Staging any play is very exposing because, if you are going to do it well, you have to put so much of yourself into it.
My generation feels it has been lied to a great deal.
