John Tiffany

Where film can eat up story, theatre needs space and breath.

I love singing, and I used to perform quite a lot, but now, as a director, you just tend to watch other people perform and tell them what to do.

If you're going to be hosting any event or a performance or having dinner with people after a performance, it is work, but it's also social: food and a glass of wine would be involved often.

I tend to work quite a lot during the weekends. My weekend can often be about two hours on Sunday.

Pinocchio's really naughty. He's all impulse: 'I want to sleep now. I want to eat that. I want to run off to Pleasure Island.' It's commedia dell'arte meets Grimm's tales.

In film, if you've got to do a scene in a swimming pool, you do a scene in a swimming pool. If you've got to blow up a car, you blow up a car. In theater, you can't do that, and therefore, you have the opportunity to engage the audience's imagination in a way that's rich.

It couldn't interest me less, the idea of putting a living room on stage. I just think, what's the point of walking into a theater to see a living room? A sofa in a forest? Now you're talking.

Trump is like an eater of worlds from an 'Avengers' movie, but there seem to be different rules for him. What are Twitter doing, for example? He's constantly breaking their rules, the sort of stuff other people get thrown off for.

I worked on new plays at the Traverse and did my best work in Scotland for years, so I never had ambitions for things like Disney.

I'm never going to stop making theatre, but I don't think I'll make it as much, because I don't need to. There are other things I want to do with my life. I want to sit by the sea in Yorkshire and eat Eccles cakes and spend time with my family.

I don't like the idea of stepping-stones in art forms: that you do your time at a regional theatre, and then you work in London and go to the West End, and then you do films. I've never felt like following that trajectory.

I think associate director jobs are the best in the world, because you can do what you want and not have to take responsibility for it!

I don't think that just because people will pay a certain amount for a ticket that it's all right to charge it.

I was obsessed with theatre and loving the work of Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, and Howard Barker, people doing real formal experimentation. But 'Road' was the first time I'd read a play written in a very true Northern dialect that seemed to have that excitement running through it.

A first preview is not exactly a pleasant experience for directors and actors. You're never as raw as when the audience first comes in.

I don't think it's good, culturally, to base all critical judgments on a single performance.

Theatre is a living organism. You only know if your show is working when you see it with an audience. You can also tell when it isn't working - it's horrible, and you desperately try to figure out how to make it connect.

In theatre, previews are the first draft of a show. I strongly believe that. The only way we can truly tell whether that draft works is by having an audience present.

When I sold my flat in Glasgow, I bought a little cottage on the North Yorkshire coast. Whenever we go up from London to stay there, I'm just like, 'I'm home! I'm home in Bronte-land!'

The physicality of a production needs evolution and breath.