IAN Brown directed Irvine Welsh's comedy of terrors, You'll Have Had Your Hole, in its premiere at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in early 1998. Two years later, he marks his appointment as associate artistic director at the Leeds theatre by directing Shakespeare's The Comedy Of Errors.

Brown had first met the Playhouse's artistic director, Jude Kelly, when he held the artistic director's post at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, where he garnered a reputation for directing new works, not least the original production of Welsh's Trainspotting.

Jude first asked him to consider taking up the Leeds post when he was freelancing after leaving the Traverse to "take a break from running a theatre". Initially he declined, but now he has accepted the challenge on a two-year contract.

When guest-directing Proposals, You'll Have Had Your Hole and Of Mice And Men at the Playhouse, he had "liked the atmosphere of the building, liked Jude and shared her beliefs in what theatre was about". So he is delighted to be taking up his new post.

"Jude was very clear on what I could do here: I wanted to do large-scale shows - Shakespeare, musicals, new work - and to help programme the seasons and have ideas about the West Yorkshire Playhouse, with the intention also of getting me to think again about running another company in the future," he says.

"When you're a freelance, you're very rootless; when you run a company you feel you belong and you have an audience to work to, stimulating them and getting their feedback."

In directing The Comedy Of Errors, Brown fulfils his wish to be at the helm of a Shakespeare production: something he had not done for ten years.

"You slightly lose your nerve with Shakespeare and feel 'I can't do this', so I chose his first comedy as my first show," says Ian, who has enjoyed rehearsing a play with "lots of verve".

His production will be boisterous and will have a 1950s Mediterranean feel (not unlike Opera North's winter production of Donizetti's The Elixir Of Love), but that is the window dressing. "The best comedy comes out of believing in the situation, when you feel there is something at stake. If you don't care about the characters or worry about their fate, then the comedy doesn't work," he says.

Rest assured, Ian Brown's production will be The Comedy Of Errors not a comedy of trial and errors.

Comedy Of Errors, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, March 3 to April 7. Box office: 0113 213 7700.