crystalline after Like a Sun 's relentless digressions. Every Breath is more of a thriller, a chamber piece. Since that initial pair of plays, I have continued writing whenever I have a break in my theatre schedule. It is a great blessing to have started writing plays again. Writing them offers me a more compact, private act of theatre-making than directing. It is a very precise and tender way of listening to the voices inside me and of observing the world around me. Playwriting, like being a director, involves a conversation about the life of the theatre and the theatre of life. The play seems to touch on questions of identity, isolation and entitlement. How does this reflect your own ideas about the production? When I was writing the play, I never thought about what it was about per se. I began with a simple image -- a security guard looking out from behind the glass walls of an empty office tower. I was fascinated by the transparency of this image, the play of surface and depth. I wanted to set up an unusual meeting between this lonely figure and another set of characters. And so, s/he came to stand beside a swimming pool under the stars to guard a family whose existence is under threat. This family seem to lead a very good life -- they have excellent taste in food, art, literature and so on -- but there's something lacking, hollowed out, even empty in their lives. The