What are the particular challenges of directing actors to play physically disabled people?
It’s really challenging. I’ve got a fantastic movement and fight director, David Leong, working on it with me, and that’s making all the difference in the world. We both studied deaf and blind kids. Practically everything that Helen Keller does is choreographed to the last moment. This ten-year-old girl who’s playing Helen will have to understand what it is to be violent, and blind and deaf and mute, and not able to communicate at all. It’s very tough. How are you preparing her? What do you do to make that make sense to her? She’s had a lot of blindfold work. She’s had earplugs. She has voice work. She does a lot of violence work, a lot of fighting. The play seems to have spectacular fights. I hope so, yes. In the 2001 awards given by Stage Newspaper, you were named one of the one hundred most influential people in British theatre. The only other two female directors were Jude Kelly and Deborah Warner (Medea). You’re touted as a very hot talent. When could you tell that you were on the
