One of the starting-points for this project has been the paper I wrote for the Scenography and Performance Symposium (Loughborough University, 2004) - Flatness and Depth. Flatness has always been a bit of an obsession of mine and in attempting to write an academic paper about this, I noticed that a number of performances at that time contained scenes in which the action moved from a rather flat or shallow use of the performance space to a far deeper and more far-reaching one – with a corresponding change in the prevailing mood of the work and how the work appeared to be affecting the audience. There seemed to be a correspondence in fact, in a number of instances, between the depth of the staging or mis-en-scene and the emotional depth for which the work seemed to be reaching. This movement from flatness to depth is one of the things which I will be exploring in this new play. Of course, it is also inspired by the far deeper stage which now exists at Hampstead, and some of the work I have seen there. Recently there seems to have been a conscious effort to explore the depth of this stage, and the possibilities which it offers, which I think has quite possibly contributed to the sense that the theatre has somehow turned a corner, and is not bursting with life again. Each theatre space I think determines much about the kind of work that can be staged there. I think that people feel relieved to know that the theatre is living and breathing again, to its full capacity, and that somehow this new energy about the place communicates itself to potential audiences.