"Great plays, superbly done," boasts the company motto, even before The Mooted Theatre Company have mounted their first production.

Set up by Icabod and York Shakespeare Project (YSP) director Mark France, YSP actors Andy Curry and Bill Laughey, production designer Cath Doman and business manager Caroline Cordts, Mooted are performing David Mamet's A Life In The Theatre at three Yorkshire venues in June, starting in York.

Mamet's behind-the-scenes play follows a brace of actors through the highs and lows of a life-changing season, sharing the detritus of their lives and their dressing room in a story of two people spending too much time together in a confined space.

Charles Hutchinson meets artistic director Mark France and actor Andy Curry for a company briefing.

What are your objectives?

Mark: "Our objectives are simple. We want to produce theatre that places the audience at the heart of what we do, theatre that's popular and entertaining as well as distinctive and challenging. Our work will encompass plays both new and old, well known and never performed. Mooted aim to produce challenging and entertaining theatre in which words matter as much as images and images as much as words."

How did the company come together?

Mark: "I'd worked with Andy and Bill last summer on the Henry plays for YSP, and I loved working with them both. I've done plays for the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Icabod and YSP, but I really wanted to create a new company with like-minded people and in Andy and Bill I saw actors of a really high standard."

How was the name The Mooted Theatre Company chosen?

Andy: "There were emails flying back and forth about our mooted theatre company', and obviously we came to a point where we had to think of a name, and we thought, The Mooted Theatre Company, why not?

"I'd done drama at university, and I so enjoyed working with Mark and Bill last year that when the idea was first mooted, it seemed an incredibly exciting opportunity. I'm the kind of person who, if I get involved in a play, I try to get as involved as possible."

Give an example.

Andy: "With this company we've all got our own roles and for this show I've written the music, as I've written music for a long time and have my own band The Andy Curry Band.

"I've composed music in a variety of different styles for this play as there are excerpts from the shows the actors are in, which range from costume dramas to ER-style hospital dramas, so I can write in many styles while trying to maintain a cohesive whole."

Why did you select A Life In The Theatre as your opening salvo for Mooted?

Mark: "An actor suggested it to me about ten years ago, and though that project didn't come off, it was a play I kept in mind as something I very much wanted to do.

"It has two such juicy parts for actors and I felt it would be a really good way to introduce the company, and as it has 25-26 scenes in only 80 minutes - some of them only four or five lines - it presents a directing challenge as well."

What struck you most about the play?

Andy: "It's hugely honest about the art of acting Mark: "Mamet gets to the heart of what it is to go out on stage every night and have a symbiotic relationship with the audience. It's a relationship that can be very cruel as actors come to depend on the response, and when they don't get that reaction, it's difficult for them, as they come to value themselves not only as actors but also as people from the critical feedback they get every night."

Sum up the play.

Mark: "It's not just about actors but about friendship, jealousy, love and hate, the passion of youth and the wisdom of age. It's about knowing when to speak and when to listen, and when to teach and when to learn. It's a play in which fine words mask coarse behaviour and the noblest of motives are lost in the eagerness to please."

What is Mamet's stance on actors?

Andy: "It's the writing of a man who is hugely in love with it all, even with every little nastiness and idiosyncrasy that may come along - so it's a very barbed form of affection."

How do you blend with Bill Laughey as a partnership on stage?

Andy: "I'm 27 and Bill is in his forties, and we have quite different styles of acting. His character is a very classical man of the theatre and I'm playing a young buck who turns up with his new fangled ideas and his ego. Doing a play like this keeps us on our toes."

Andy is a graphic designer, Bill is a GP three days a week, and you are a theatre director, so what are your long-term plans for Mooted, Mark?

"I've worked a lot as a professional director, albeit mainly on small-scale theatre shows, but with this new company we're setting up something that we hope will outgrow its start to develop big plans within two years. Hopefully we'll be working on large-scale productions, playing nationally as well as regionally.

"We're looking to expand into a professional company, and we want to think a little more entrepreneurially rather than just seek funding.

"At Icabod we would be given money to develop a play but then not have the funding to take it around. At Mooted, we'll be focussing more on the audience, where we'll say, yes, our work is intelligent, the craft will be accomplished, but we want you to be moved by it, to enjoy it too'.

"Sometimes in theatre there's an argument that it's vulgar to be commercial, but I don't think there's any shame in wanting to put on work that's seen by audiences of 1,000 rather than 300, and so we want to have a mixed economy, doing both big shows and shows in village halls."

  • The Mooted Theatre Company in A Life In The Theatre, Basement Bar, City Screen, York, Tuesday, 8pm. Box office: 0871 7042054 or www.picturehouses.co.uk; St Robert's Community Centre, Robert Street, Harrogate, next Friday, 8pm, 07778 614544; The Carriageworks, Leeds, next Saturday, 8pm, 0113 2243801 or www.carriageworkstheatre.org.uk

Please note, some language in Mamet's play may cause offence.