Showing The Invisible

"I’ve said continually that in the theatre we have to stage the visible, and through it, show the invisible, what’s behind it. In practice, I find when speaking about this in front of an audience, I can say, `And the...', and offer a silence and a gesture, which already speak more than the visible. Here, in Eleven and Twelve, the scenery is simple, and the playing and the words are also simple, and lead to gaps, and the gaps are what are behind the visible. What must have led me so long ago to choose a theme of the empty space is that that's where the perfume, the taste, the sense of something more can appear in the everyday. In every play I’ve done, all that’s interested me - and this is why I’ve never wanted to be a real `theatre director', running, say, a national theatre and feeling that I have to have a career where, at the end, I can I just tick off all the different things I’ve done - all I've wanted to do is explore by doing everything in every direction for the sake of its energy: energy and physical excitement and participating in all the different forms. Gradually, that has reduced itself into looking closely, within many, many different themes, and behind the themes, at what more could be there."