DERMOT Daly likes to feel his way into a role until it takes him over. At the moment he is reaching out to Othello.

Later this month, Dermot will be playing the great Shakespearean part for the York Shakespeare Project. Othello will be the project’s 19th production.

Interviewed alongside Katie Macintyre, who will be playing Desdemona, he agrees this is a big one. “It’s massive,” he says.

When rehearsing such a role, Dermot, 30, is drawn into the part until it subsumes him. At some point in the process, he feels that he understands the character so fully that he almost becomes obsessed with being that person.

“I can’t let it go,” he says.

Part of this transformation involves learning the lines, of course, but this acting chore does not worry Dermot too much. “I never find it a massive issue once I understand what is being said, not just the words themselves but the sub-text, what the words sit on top of.”

Dermot is a professional actor, from Leeds, in a cast mostly comprising amateurs. “I first acted when I was 12 and have been on the go more or less ever since.”

His latest TV appearance is in DCI Banks, a new series of which opened on Wednesday. He plays a cop called Tony, or ‘Soco’ as the Radio Times puts it.

But back to Othello, which will be directed in the Studio at York Theatre Royal by Mark France, artistic director of Mooted Theatre Co.

You can’t discuss Othello without mentioning Iago, whose malign and manipulative presence is the force behind the play, so let’s start with him.

“He’s the puppet-master,” says Dermot. “Almost everything that happens, it happens because of him.”

Mark France has said this will be a hard, masculine production.

“It’s unflinching,” says Dermot, something which is heightened by the intimate space of the Studio, where there is nowhere to hide – “literally and metaphorically,” he says.

For Katie, who is 19 and a student at the University of York, in the department of Theatre, Film and Television, the physical force comes when she is slapped by Othello: the point from which the descent into tragedy can be marked.

“The first act is quite light and funny,” she says. But once that has flown by, the gloom descends.

So how do they carry off the shocking slap? Neither seems keen on answering that one. “It’s about trust,” says Dermot. Other than that, he declines to elaborate, preferring to keep this ‘secret’ among actors.

Katie says the play is “so hard, so desolate”, but she reveals that casting her as a silent woman is not exactly a fit. “Everyone who knows me, all my family and friends, will tell you that I am very outspoken, so it’s really ironic for me to play a woman who chooses to be silent.

“I think it’s absolutely amazing to explore what Shakespeare meant by the lines he wrote. She’s a young girl who will do anything because she is desperate to be loved.”

Katie adds at one point that she didn’t want to play the role as a delicate character, to which Tony responds: “In no respect, sweetheart, you are not playing her delicate at all.”

The cast have been rehearsing since August, although Dermot had time off for his wedding. During rehearsals, he likes only to see the scenes Othello is in.

“It’s very important that Othello doesn’t know what is happening,” he says. Not seeing the other scenes, and remaining innocent of Iago’s morbid scheming, helps Dermot to maintain this illusion.”

Although Dermot appears on television, he is always drawn back to the stage. With television, sometimes it can be months or even years before a programme ends up on screen.

“I love theatre because of its immediacy,” he says.

And with that, this pair head off for rehearsals. Whether slapping will be involved, no one says.

• Othello runs in the Studio, York Theatre Royal, from October 23 to 27. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk