With sets often more pared-back than in plays, many dance shows lean on lighting wizardry to accentuate dancers’ movements. Three designers speak to Kate Wyver

The disabled dance sector is thriving in many ways but is also under threat from under-the-radar cuts to Access to Work grants. Kate Wyver investigates

Fight direction has developed far beyond pulling punches. Kate Wyver discovers more about the process, the overlap with intimacy direction and why conflict drives a story forward

From 2012 to 2017, the Donmar Warehouse staged a trilogy of all-female Shakespeare productions, set in women’s prisons and created in collaboration with inmates. The key players tell The Stage about the impact the project has had both on the art and the women they worked with

Renowned choreographer Matthew Bourne is one of dance’s greatest storytellers. With this being his 21st consecutive Christmas season at Sadler’s Wells, he reveals how his creations became festive favourites

Charlie Josephine is following up their non-binary take on the Joan of Arc story, I, Joan, with another slice of queered theatre, Cowbois. The writer talks about reimagining the western, prioritising pleasure and how the work for representation doesn’t stop on stage

In just three years of operating, production company Wessex Grove already has an impressive list of West End shows under its belt, including A Little Life, The Seagull and Constellations. The business’ co-founders Benjamin Lowy and Emily Vaughan-Barratt talk about why they started, how they are putting their teams first, and what is coming next

As Chris Bush and Richard Hawley’s musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge is nominated for eight Olivier awards, the playwright talks about creating theatre of scale, what she learned from writing musicals, and why her work champions community and compassion

As Neil Bartlett’s stage adaption of Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid masterpiece Orlando opens, the writer and director discusses what he’s learnt, struggled against and been liberated by in a 40-year career

Best known as Princess Anne in The Crown, the actor tells us what she learnt from her prestigious peers on the Netflix show and talks about starring in a fresh take on The Crucible at the National Theatre

As he prepares to star in Burn – his dance show about Scottish poet Robert Burns at the Edinburgh International Festival – multitalented performer Alan Cumming talks to Kate Wyver

In the planning since 2018, Kris Nelson’s inaugural curation of LIFT, London’s biennial international theatre festival, finally gets underway this month. He tells Kate Wyver how cutting his teeth directing festivals in Canada and Ireland taught him to read a city, about staying on top of current conversations and seeing London itself as a workshop

Twenty-five years after her groundbreaking performance as King Lear, Kathryn Hunter has returned to play the role at Shakespeare’s Globe. The acclaimed actor tells Kate Wyver what she’s learnt since that landmark production – about acting, how Lear’s world, that’s lost its moral compass, is ‘not unlike ours’ and the magnificence of exploring the classic texts for new truths

US set designer Matt Saunders has brought a swimming pool into the Almeida for the transfer of “Daddy” – A Melodrama. He tells Kate Wyver how the show’s look was inspired by David Hockney and why the simplest design can be the most beautiful

As the actor, best known for his role in Death of England: Delroy, prepares to star in Much Ado About Nothing, he tells us how an epiphany during his time in prison led him to a life on the stage, training at RADA and his dream of playing Macbeth and Othello