I didn’t have a lot of mentors when I – I mean I kind of just grew up in the gym, just climbing a lot. So I didn’t really have mentors. I mean I definitely had people that I looked up to and people in the climbing community, but that’s just sort of the typical hero worship style, you know. Like Peter Croft was a really prominent soloist from the generation before me and I was like, “Oh, Peter’s the man!”

Growing up, it was the music, the style, it was what you saw, what you read, what you looked at, the vernacular that influenced you the most. I carried that, it was so important to me.

No. Although I have to qualify that. Though he was, by jazz standards, a very square composer, he was, by musical theater standards, a not square composer, and he taught me to be less square. I tend to be square.

Yeah, of course! I think they made that way back in like 1968 with an optical printer where they had to keep shooting each section. It was made for IBM. The idea of virtual travel versus physical travel, the idea of exploration.

A couple of summers ago, walking through a forest illuminated by fireflies, with my man and our dogs.

Anything new that’s got chemicals involved and radically alters your body, I’m not a fan. We should just love ourselves in whatever shape we are. Also, what about the poor people with diabetes who can’t get it now because all these fucking actors are shooting up?

Plug it in, switch it on and read the bloody label.

I realized, I’m not doing it for the audience; I’m doing it for me. I like it. I want to be able to see if I can still do it. I want to see if I can challenge myself. I want to have a good time. With ‘Macbeth,’ I wasn’t finished with it. It wasn’t out of my system.

Dying on the same day as someone much more famous than me.

I think the notion of a bucket list is kind of wrong, actually. If you want to do something, go and do it. Don't put it on a list and think, I want to do this before I die. What if you die tomorrow? Just go and do the things. Seize the day. A couple of years ago, I decided I'd like to do a dance piece, and I ended up doing this one-man dance-theater piece about (Scottish poet) Robert Burns. I just wanted to use my body in a different way.