Anything that I have to say about Chekhov from a director's perspective amounts to a testament to his extraordinary durability, the sheer toughness of the material and how well made his plays are. In fact, the experiences I have to relate are full of compromise at every level and thus quite opposite to any idealistic or ideological approach. What shines through my memory of the experience is the play - the indestructibility of the play almost beyond ruination. The story I have to tell more or less proves this.

I wanted the Royal Shakespeare Company both for political reasons and reasons proceeding from my own social convictions, to mount a kind of small-scale touring operation, which would enable the company 'to reach the parts of the country that other beers could not reach'. I wanted to go to places where there were no existing theatre buildings, or where there was an absence of a theatre-going habit or tradition. By definition, therefore, places that would seem to have been 'written off for theatre.