Cymbeline was the inaugural production by The Peripeteia Players, which was formed by Rachael Dyson-McGregor and I, after I attended a masterclass with Tim Carroll for a week in Auckland, New Zealand in March 2006. Under the guidance of Stuart Devenie, and having convinced the local Irish pub The Dogs Bollix (a beamy converted church, candles in bottles, rugby in the background, cheesy nachos) to let us have the run of the place, we gathered ten of us together, adopting Carroll's practice of all learning two major roles and asking the audience to flip a coin two minutes before showtime to determine the casting. We invited the audience to keep treating the pub like a pub rather than a theatre - to go to the bar whenever they wanted, rather than waiting for a break, putting the onus on the actors to be responsive and interesting, rather than relying on traditional (that is to say, default 20th/21st century) theatre etiquette. Within the company, we resisted the titles you'd find in 'normal' theatre, thinking instead about what kind of structures might have been in place in Shakespeare's company - for example, there is no record of Shakespeare's company having a director, although they did have an actor-manager. The role of the director only became defined once proscenium-arch theatre became the norm, with its lighting and set and 'blocking' to shape the action (to best please those paying the most in the middle of the stalls). When playing in-the-round and at the mercy of unpredictable weather/standing audience/birds, as at the Globe, it becomes ridiculous to try and constrain a production inside such tight bounds - the actors need to able to be responsive to the changing conditions, and the role of the director shifts, in the best cases, to train the actors to be ready for anything, and to build a culture of trust and playfulness that encourages this. It is a more exposed way of playing, far more (in my experience) akin to playing a gig.