One view of the relationship between the word and the creative act is Goethe’s admonition: ‘Bilde Künstler, rede nicht’ – ‘Create, [the German word actually places more emphasis on the idea of shaping and forming than on artistic imagination] artist, don’t talk’. Typically, of course, his own Conversations with Eckermann (1823–32) show him frequently ignoring this precept, when the occasion (or the questioner) demands. And the last forty years have seen a proliferation of books in which actors, directors and designers talk – sometimes revealingly, sometimes unproductively – about their approach to the creative or re-creative act.