The main quality I look for in a young performer is fearlessness. I don’t mean jumping off walls fearless (although that’s great), I mean that in this profession there’s a lot of neurosis, and that doesn’t fit with the work we do. We need people who don’t care what others think. I’m looking for people who are hungry for the world with a bit of irreverence and some naughtiness thrown in as well.

Being an ensemble company we have a network of people who we work with again and again. There’s a core group of about 10 performers and a wider pool of about 30 people who we’ve worked with before. In terms of creating opportunities for new talent that makes it a real conundrum. We want to stick by and honour the people who’ve made us who we are but we also need to be open to outside influences to avoid becoming stale.

We work with the National Youth Theatre a lot and that’s proved brilliant for finding young people. Talking broadly, a lot of people at NYT are doing degrees and getting drama training alongside. They’re experimenting and working out what it is they want to do rather than aiming down a set path. We’re after people who will work with us for the long term. Every time we start a relationship with a new artist we hope we’ll still be friends and colleagues in twenty years’ time. That’s why we like to find people who don’t quite know where they fit yet. It’s great to see people’s careers and interests develop and grow alongside ours.

Everyone knows the mainstream routes into the performing arts and I like the fact that we work differently. We’re being bombarded by television shows about being discovered and launching your career in an instant. For me, being an artist is a lifetime’s journey that you need to take gently and slowly.

Generally speaking, the traditional drama school training doesn’t suit us that well. We consider ourselves performers rather than straight actors. Most of the people in our ensemble are multi-disciplined in some way so they bring different skills with them. We’ve got a puppeteer, a writer, even a builder. That’s really important to us as it pushes the boundaries of what we can achieve. Having said that, I came through drama school, so there are no rules. If we meet someone we like, we work with them.

I get a huge amount of input from my team. As the director I think it’s my job to create an environment in which people can be creative. The final show isn’t mine, it’s the collective imagination of the whole group.

When Kneehigh started thirty years ago as a group of sign writers, school teachers and Tesco workers, there were no theatres in Cornwall. In the early days Kneehigh would set up in woods, on beaches, wherever. The company grew to love it and you can still find that influence in our storytelling. We don’t rely on words because no one can hear you on a beach so we’ve developed quite rough, physical, forms of storytelling. If you ask people in Cornwall if they go to the theatre they say ‘no, but I do go to see Kneehigh’. I’m inordinately proud that they see it like that.

Emma Rice was speaking to Katie Jackson