I have never had to justify my directorial choices outside the rehearsal room so much as with this production, which on the one hand is great for refining my process, and hopefully making better work, but in a way saddens me that it must always be such a political statement to use women in 'male' parts. If a female Hamlet destablises and challenges our notions of theatre and of gender, an all-female Hamlet pushes these boundaries even further, which is on the one hand wonderful but hopefully also provokes questions in the opposite direction – will there come a point when one doesn't have to justify the choice to cross-cast? Is gender-blindness genuinely possible in the theatre?

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A woman enters the room with a book, and the Sheikh's many wives appear to greet and judge this new arrival...

The book is Hamlet - an unfamiliar story to the wives of this mythologised Harem but a story nonetheless that they treat as one of their own narratives. They start reading aloud, but soon, as always within their private female world, the story begins to take on a life of its own and gradually they become the characters they have been reading. The latest wife, the outsider, reads the part of Hamlet while the others play multiple roles - perhaps swapping parts as the piece progresses and they settle into their natural roles, mirroring those of the Harem. And as the magic and beauty of Shakespeare's words draws them further into the story their very style of performance evolves to do justice to it.

They find themselves transcending the story-telling traditions of their culture by creating a magical world in which the story is released not merely orally but through puppetry, dance and live music, re-creating the play amongst themselves. Now the theatrical landscape is one of bold, beautiful, fluid images with a soundscape of live music supporting the story - it is as though the women must grasp every opportunity or potential method to communicate this story, their story, a story which has to be told. This for me is the essence of theatre - the struggle to communicate, to realise those stories that burn within us, stories we have to tell - even if that means inventing new languages to tell them.