When I was 16, Stoke-on-Trent’s only professional theatre company could not afford people to work in the bar, to sell tickets, to show people to their seats. So, those of us with time on our hands volunteered and worked for free. We became known as “The Vic Vols” and very shortly we realised that we were privileged – we got to see the plays for free!

The Victoria Theatre was ‘in the round’. That means that the stage is surrounded by the audience. There were only two theatres like that in the 1970s in England. As a ‘Vic Vol’ one of my duties was to sit with a torch in the front row near an exit in case there was an emergency.

I rememember watching the Battle of Dunsinane – this is where MacBeth gets killed by MacDuff. The two actors playing these parts were enormous. In the battle scene they were attacking each other with massive and dangerous looking swords. I was physically frightened.

You can never be physically frightened in a cinema.

After that I started to do some amateur dramatics and even learned to dance the “Charleston” for a part in the musical “The Boyfriend”.

When I went to university I studied Drama and had the opportunity to direct and act in a number of shows. I played Dracula in another musical (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and I directed some plays by Dario Fo and Franca Rame.

Then I formed a theatre group called Foursight and we spent 2 years taking theatre into schools. We wrote and performed “Goodbyte Mr Chips” – a play explaining how computers work and carried out drama workshops with students. We then started to visit village halls, hospitals and prisons. Anywhere where we could find an willing audience.

Cinema is, essentially, lights projected against a white screen. While you watch Tom Cruise battling with Samurai, he is on some beach somewhere or living it up in a Hollywood casino.

But theatre is immediate. Everything is the right size. It is there in front of your very eyes; and no two performances are the same. You can feel the emotion coming from the actor.

Four years ago I went to Madrid and saw “Cabaret”. Just walking into the Alcala Theatre was an overwhelming experience. The anticipation was electric. You never get that in a cinema.

From a small provincial theatre in England to a major Spanish theatre, it has always been the same. A space, an actor and an audience.

As Shakespeare said, actors in a theatre are “such stuff as dreams are made on.”