The first time was at Ilkley Literature Festival on Saturday at Madani Younis's new play Happy and Married.

I first met Madani five years ago when he was artistic director of the Asian Theatre School. The company did what it said on the tin, creating work about Asian issues, telling Asian stories using mainly Asian actors.

I have always been impressed by Madani and admired greatly what he was working to achieve.

Madani, clearly, had grown tired of seeing other people regard him as a tick in a box marked "ethnic" and he made a bold statement when he named his new company Freedom Studios.

Why should he define himself as an Asian artist? His desire is to be regarded and judged as an artist not an "Asian artist".

His new show, Happy and Married, clearly contained surprises for the sell-out audience in Ilkley. There was an Asian actor in the two-hander – but there was also a Spanish actor and little discussion of Asian issues – and the audience who had come to see the latest piece by the man from Asian Theatre School were bewildered.

In exploding out of the box he has been forced into, Madani's artistic vision has been pushed to the limits and his new play is a challenging piece.

At the question and answer session with the director which followed the performance, a group of three women put this to Madani – we were confused, we didn't understand what was happening – they said. You're not always supposed to, said Madani (let me make clear, I am paraphrasing).

After his answer, the three women left, having made their point that they come to the theatre to be entertained by a piece of work and they were not happy at being quite so challenged. They clearly felt insulted
by what they saw as the deliberately obscure nature of the piece.

I wasn't sure with whose view I agreed.

Then I met Jonathan Poole. Also an artist, Jonathan creates his work in the medium of contemporary dance. If any art form is regarded as obscure, then surely contemporary dance is beaten only by installation art.

I put the idea to him that a performance might be created for the creator and it doesn't matter if an audience doesn't quite get the point.

"Then do it in your front room or your back garden," said Jonathan.

I'm tempted to agree solely with Jonathan, but as Madani said, Beckett and Brecht are pretty obscure but we don't dismiss them because of it.

On an unrelated note, my favourite piece of advice
from Ilkley Literature Festival came from Stephen May, author of TAG, there to talk about being a first-time novelist.

On the question of the impetus to write a first novel, he said: "It's like planting a tree – the best time is 20 years ago, the second best time is now."