PERCHED on a spindly chair in his Brixton kitchen, Mark Rylance looks much more an Ariel than a Prospero. He played the winged messenger to Derek Jacobiís potent master in Ron Danielís Tempest in 1982-4. Now, having set the critics chasing after superlatives with his consummate RSC Hamlet for Daniels (twinned with an equally-acclaimed Romeo) in 1989-90, Rylance is returning to The Tempest, both to direct and to play Prospero with his own company, Phoebus Cart. ëItís a bit of an unlikely step, isnít it,í he says mildly of the leap to Prospero. But if his slight build and that mournful, fluting voice recall Ariel, thereís also a quiet calm ñ a conviction ñ to him that adds weight to his assuming the lead role and to the aims he has for this production.

The Phoebus Cart Tempest will tour throughout June and July, playing three sites which are loosely described as ësacredí: Oxfordshireís Rollright Stones, Corfe Castle, and the reconstruction of Shakespeareís Globe in London. As well as a full cast of characters, there will be four dancers representing the four elements within the performance. Rylance talks at length and with animation of the discoveries he has made in the structures of Shakespeareís plays and these chosen sites, and explains how he came to collaborate on The Tempest with landscape cosomlogist Peter Dawkins.

ëThrough the furnace of playing Hamlet eight times a week on tour in 11 different cities, I became aware of an electricity in the play to do with holding and releasing, negative and positive, tragedy and comedy,í he says. ëThen I met Peter, who has done a lot of research into different wisdom traditions through history, and he described to me a basic structure that life, or science or nature or all follow ñ itís most easily observed in the changing of the seasons. Shakespeareís plays seem very much structured in this way ñ he actually described to me what Iíd been feeling.í

After working with Dawkinsí ideas on Hamlet, Rylance and Claire van Kampen (his wife, co-founder of Phoebus Cart, and a musical director with the RSC) decided they wanted to share with an entire company Dawkinsí work from the start of a production. ëWe decided on The Tempest: it comes at the beginning of the folio and is the index to all the plays, describing or touching on all the things that are to follow.í He explains how The Tempest, like all the comedies, deals with a unity fragmented and then reformed through an act of mercy and the abnegation of power: this theme is central to his production.

ëPart of my playing Prospero is me asking why we can only accept the kind of mercy he embraces in an old man,í says Rylance, pointing out that the power struggles launched by Prosperoís contemporaries ñ Sebastian, Antonio, even Alonso ñ are far more credible in younger, greedier men. ëThereís also the prevalent idea that itís Shakespeareís last play, so you can go and see old Shakespeare saying everything he ever thought. Timon of Athens, which is unfinished perhaps because itís full of such personal anger and bitterness, seems much more like a last play.í This Tempest will not be a directorís presentation, as a fait accomplit, of his interpretation of Shakespeareís own epitaph, but a production which invites the audience to explore and experience the wisdom Prospero embodies. The choice of the three arenas, which have very different histories as communal meeting places, are part of Rylanceís disaffection with the theatre which is merely presentational, and his striving towards an event in all senses ëliveí, where the audience will feel a far greater involvement.

This sense of sharing in the play extends to his working methods. Although he accepts the term ëdirectorí as a necessary label, he seems to dislike its associations. As an actor, he says, it became increasingly difficult to involve himself in productions where the cast had no responsibility for or input into the shape of the production. As a result, he set up the London Theatre of Imagination 8of which Phoebus Cart is a direct descendent) as a company which ërather than following one personís linear view through a play, would work as a group with equal responsibility for all decisions.í The companyís first two productions, Othello and Much Ado About Nothing, had ëa kind of chaotic unityí, but Rylance soon realised that the group was stagnating without a single, initial, creative spark to sow the seed for each project. Having since directed The Changeling for British Chinese Theatre Company at the Finborough, he now feels able to take on that role.

ëBut Iíd never direct myself as Hamlet or Romeo,í he affirms. ëProspero is quite an apt one to be at the centre of the production.í And around him he knows he has a cast to whom he can pass the energy or authority whenever necessary, having assembled a group of performers from the RSC, British Chinese Theatre, LTI, Scottish Opera and from his formative National Theatre days with Mike Alfreds, all of whom share his aims for the production and are performing on a profit-share basis.

There is certainly something energising about the way he talks about telling the story non-verbally through the dancers, about incorporating the vagaries of the weather, and about linking the power and the magic of The Tempest to the magic of everyday life. And thereís a lengthy, uncomfortable, hurt pause on the tape of our interview when I suggest that some may dismiss his production as part of the lunatic fringe.

ëMy work is not haphazard or lunatic,í he finally and firmly replies, pointing out that the project has been long in preparation ñ it was at one point slated for the RSCís small-scale tour, before the money ran out ñ and that he has put his flat down as surety to get it off the ground. ëIf people write it off as not being based in the text, too, then Iíd say they hadnít done their homework or hadnít seen my work before. My life is dedicated to this work. I donít fuck about.í

All good theatre work, he suggests, must arise from a certain amount of experimentation, and is again possessed with his peculiarly charming enthusiasm. ëWith this tour, the sky is quite literally our limit. By opening ourselves to the elements we always have to be fresh. Like an army assault course, this is an assault course of the imagination.í