When did you begin to focus on this subject? Was there a turning point for you?

I was always interested in sound & music but overlooked theatre because there wasn't a good theatre in my home town. Initially i tried music production and radio but didn't find them appealing. I discovered theatre by chance and was hooked immediately. I then did a lot of research on the industry: looking through career's packs, talking to people in the industry, reading The Stage, etc and eventually decided to take the plunge.

What is your definition of being creative? Do you always take complete creative control?

Being creative is simply coming up with ideas and finding solutions to problems. The director ultimately has creative control, and for each project I negotiate with them how much creative input I'm going to have. Sound is a developing art in theatre, so respect does not come automatically, it has to be earned.

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In the following years we did lots of paper projects and the like, at which I did very badly on the whole. I looked around at the other students and realised that the work we were doing wasn't that dissimiliar but when I presented my work I usually managed to shoot myself in the foot somehow or another. I worked out that half of sound design is in the sound work and the other half is down to communicating your ideas effectively.

This order of training co-incided well with the jobs that came my way - first doing technician jobs to pay the rent and to get to know the industry and equipment, whilst I worked away in fringe theatres brushing up the communication skills. When I felt confident enough, I used my contacts from having worked as a technician to launch myself as a designer.

The training courses i did compared nothing though to what I learnt by working in the industry