Interview: From vision to reality: bringing the outside in

The idea to stage a play in and around an actual locomotive in the National Railway Museum was one of the artistic director's big ideas that was turned into reality.

The Railway Children, adapted by York writer Mike Kenny, opened at the city's NRM in 2008. It was one of the theatre's biggest hits in recent years.

On the back of the success, Cruden had a bigger idea – if it worked in the NRM, why couldn't it work in an actual train station? The answer was it could, and the production is now playing to sell-out audiences at London's Waterloo station.

With a major hit under his belt, Cruden didn't stop there. Late last year, he had another Big Idea.

Paul Veysey, York Theatre Royal's production manager, remembers discussing Cruden's latest plan.

"It was a wet afternoon in November and we took a walk down to Rowntree Park where there is a small amphitheatre built in the grounds," says Veysey.

"The idea was to stage Wind in the Willows in this amphitheatre and build a huge tent around the area."

Taking these major productions outside of the theatre building is neither a slight on the ancient York Theatre Royal, nor an indication that Cruden doesn't want to create work inside the building. Rather it is testament to the fact that Cruden is evangelical about theatre and sometimes that means taking it out to the masses.

It is also an indication that the theatre, beautiful and steeped in history though it is, can be limiting with its structured proscenium arch stage.

As it happened, the costs of building an enormous tent in Rowntree Park were prohibitive, and the idea to stage the Kenneth Grahame story in the park was a no-go before it got off the ground.

Rather than stop in the face of this obstacle, throwing the baby out with the bath water, Cruden and Veysey came up with a new plan.

The idea behind staging The Wind in the Willows outdoors in the park was to create an all enveloping feeling of nature to the production. Why not recreate that in the theatre?

"Obviously, the biggest problem is the stage. With it being a pros' arch, it's quite limiting to create that kind of atmosphere," says Veysey.

While Cruden came up with the plan, it was down to Veysey and fellow production manager Jude Cloke to turn it into some kind of reality.

The best way to create the feeling that the audience is involved in the action, it is generally accepted, is to stage theatre in-the-round, where the audience sits on all sides of the stage.

To turn the theatre, built in 1744, into an in-the-round space has meant building an entirely new stage two-and-a-half metres above the level of the normal one, taking it all the way up to the Dress Circle.

"It has been quite a feat of engineering when you think about it," says Veysey, who has worked at the theatre for two decades.

"I think the most exciting thing is that we've managed to do it.

"My job is not to say it can't be done; it's to work out a way of how we can do it.

"This has been a really big undertaking – the biggest thing we've done at the theatre while I've been here. It took a lot of research

and development, a lot of preparation, but once that was done it took about a week to physically get the stage in there."

Having turned another of Cruden's ideas into an impressive reality, Veysey is undeterred by what challenges lay ahead.

"I think this points the way to other things we might do in the future. It was such an unknown leap we took to actually do this – now that we know we can, who knows what we might do next?"

York Theatre Royal, to August 21.