David Farr

We don't live in vacuums; we do care about the world, and we do want to believe our country is doing the right thing on our behalf.

The world in the '90s had seemed somewhat stable. There was talk of the end of history, a calm consensus around where we were all going. Consumer capitalism with some sort of social conscience. Then 9/11 happened, and that illusion was blown out of the water.

I love telling stories. I don't really think in terms of clear 'aims.'

Perhaps I'm temperamentally driven to see things from the point of view of the attacked rather than the attacker.

'Fall Of A City' aims to convey, in all its emotional richness, the effects of war and the toll taken on city and family by the horrors of siege.

The story of Ilium, the ancient city of Troy, has always gripped me.

We go into nature to transform.

When you go into a forest, anything can happen.

Most Robin Hood stories are not very exciting. There are not a lot of surprises.

Directing is extrovert and gregarious; writing is isolating, introverted, and lonely.

All comedy is funny because it tells us truths that we recognise through laughter, but that doesn't mean it can't be unnerving. Think of 'Fawlty Towers'; it can be very, very dark, but by God, it's funny. The two things are not in opposition.

Comedy is good at analysing and dealing with evil because it doesn't present it as evil but a collection of banalities.

There's nothing more frightening - and exciting - than getting lost in a forest. There is a journey towards the light, and you've got to go through the dark to get to the light. That's what the forest is all about.

The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are. You get stripped of everything you thought you were, some type of ordeal takes place, and you come out stronger.

I was very struck by the fact that Robin Hood became increasingly taken over by the middle and upper classes. He starts out a bandit but becomes a fully fledged aristocrat.

The reason it's called 'The Heart of Robin Hood' is that he starts off not having a heart - or certainly not being in contact with it. And through a series of stories, he learns to discover that he has one. He becomes much more dramatic as a character, to be honest, because there's something rather too smug about the endless do-gooder.

Sometimes we don't want to be lectured; we prefer to be taken on a journey.

In the '90s, everyone thought we'd solved everything and liberal capitalism was the agreed way to live. That got blown up in 9/11, and capitalism proved completely flawed in 2008.

Theatre is a bastard form. I'm always proud of that. That's what makes it taste of life.

The 'Ramayana' explores the limits of secular freedom and the limits of religion.