As a director, what drew me to Pinter was his rhythm. You can take practically any section of a Pinter play and set it to music, and there’s something strangely satisfying in knowing that my role as a director is to uncover the hidden patterns in a text disguised as everyday speech.

Most people instinctively associate Pinter with long pauses and ellipses, but it’s wonderful when you discover that every [silence] serves the same role as a bar’s rest in a symphony. Of course all plays rely on rhythm to some degree, but when you’re directing Pinter you can afford to be a fanatic about sound because you know that you’re dealing with an expert.

No two Pinter characters speak alike – despite all appearances to the contrary. Each character has a distinctive grammatical vocabulary that, if you take the time to look at it closely enough, provides the actor with a blueprint of that individual. For instance, Charlie Parham plays a character called Richard in The Lover and Devlin in Ashes to Ashes. On the surface, Richard and Devlin have a lot in common: they come from the same socio-economic background and both attempt to infiltrate their partners’ fantasies. However, Devlin’s speech is littered with ellipses and his questions are occasionally frantic, whilst Richard tends to speak in longer sentences and uses adjectives generously. So I always try to get actors playing multiple roles in one evening to start by recognizing that it’s sometimes the simplest distinctions that make the biggest difference.

When you’re working with a tiny cast the dynamic is much more intimate and it certainly requires a higher degree of trust from the actors. When it’s just you and two actors in the rehearsal room, there’s no one there waiting for their entrance to reassure the rest of the cast that a scene’s been directed well – to chuckle at a comic line or nod approvingly after a lengthy monologue. There’s no “outsider”. Overall, I think that’s a useful thing because it forces all of us to try and bring some of that outside perspective into the way we look at a scene.

I have one very strict rule in rehearsals: no apologies. The moment an actor says “sorry” for fluffing a line or missing out a pause I ask them to begin the scene again. This hasn’t led to any particularly awful moments, but it can mean that we occasionally have to run relatively simple scenes several times before we can move on. On the other hand, the best moments are when the actors make mistakes and learn from them rather than instantly blaming themselves.

I don’t want to give too much about the plays away, but both revolve around the presence of a potentially threatening male figure. The Lover will make you laugh. Ashes to Ashes shouldn’t.

The Lover and Ashes to Ashes, starring Celine Lowenthal, Charlie Parham and Emma Hall and directed by Ceci Mourkogiannis, opens at Corpus Playroom on Tuesday 11th October.