Tim Crouch

'I, Malvolio' is a very, very funny show, a clown show, but there is Beckettian darkness in the character. Some real darkness, some right close to the edge of despair moments.

In 'Malvolio,' the audience laugh at me, and I use that laughter to crack open the question as to why they are laughing.

It's quite rare for a group of people to come together for a live event that isn't loud music. A live event that enables thinking to take place, to take place collectively. It's unique to theatre. It's a quality I never want to see diminished.

Each of my Shakespeare pieces is different to the other, but each espouses a set of philosophies common to all my theatre work.

A child knows when they are on the receiving end of a didactic exercise, or when they are sitting in the shadow of something else.

Keeping young people away from Shakespeare is like removing a link to their humanness.

Theatre critics have no special access to the truth. And there should be no objective truth to art.

'The Author' is subtly unflinching in its satirical attack on certain practices in the creation of art and the mediation of violence.

As actors, we do our best to keep things light and to encourage in the audience an openness to the changing atoms in the room.

I'm excited about the idea of an act of theatre triggering a parallel creative act of writing.

Unease is not an emotion I get often in the theatre, and I like it.

Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.

To have a sense of contemporary ownership of Shakespeare is the most important thing to his work.

It's important for me, politically, to see that theater isn't just about the powerful.

Children and teenagers don't easily relate to stories about kings and dukes, and to tell only stories about kings and dukes is to ignore the regular people.

Theatre can be so patronising. So often, it's just proselytising for the theatre.

I'm attracted to the underrated characters.

I don't want real life necessarily to be seen only as a context to heighten the deepness my work.

There is a satire that exists in 'My Arm,' but there is also an honoring of some of the stronger ideas that I've raided from visual art.

A mental shutdown can happen when a young person is put in front of a Shakespeare play. My pieces are designed to release young audiences into the story and then creep up with the real Shakespeare, almost by stealth.