Quote "I'm a massive believer in dressing up..."

I'm a massive believer in dressing up. Always have been. I think everybody changes the minute they dress up, but you have to make sure that the clothes fit. Teachers need to find things that make people less body conscious. You need big, funny clothes because if you're asking people to lose their inhibitions, the last thing you want them to do is to try and squeeze into trousers that don't fit.

I always think trying to have a way of making a space dark is good because I think acting, creating and improvising is very exposing. If you can black out the windows and just have torches, that’s great. If you haven't got a lighting rig, you don't need it. You can have electric candles, you can have torches. You can have your iPhones on, you know, whatever you might have to see if you can take the edge off so that people don't feel exposed. I think that's 90% of what I do with actors.

I take the pressure off actors by playing music underneath what they're doing, which is encouraging them not to use words all the time, to work physically, to take it out of the face and into the body. Think about all the things that make you feel exposed: being yourself, being strongly lit, feeling like you have to fill a silence. Take all those fears away, and people will surprise you. And then once they're discovering things, then you can take away the crutches. I think normally people build the other way round: rehearse in raw daylight, and then put the lights down. Do it the other way around, rehearse in the dark, and then bring the lights up when people know what they're doing.