BERYL BAINBRIDGE, NOVELIST

I have two main memories of being taken to the theatre as a child. One was "Dr Faustus" by Marlowe, which might have been at the Royal Court in Liverpool. I was about 11. Now, how can I put this? A dirty rhyme had been going round the school and it had arrived in my gym-slip pocket. My mother must have found it when she was doing the laundry. It was my birthday and she was taking me to the theatre. And as soon as I met her in Liverpool I remember thinking, "God, there's something wrong here."

I can't remember much about "Dr Faustus" except that the seven deadly sins were in it. I whispered to my mother, "What's lechery?" She replied, "I'd have thought you'd have known ... Beryl." Pretty awful, actually. I was thrown out of school eventually for it. Before meeting me that day, she had taken the note to the headmistress. That was how things were dealt with in those days. They couldn't cope.

The other lovely memory was Cecily Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert in "Dick Whittington"—the music, the lights, this woman who was supposed to be a man, striding about with bare legs, and somebody called Cat lolloping on behind. I thought it was beautiful. It was towards the end of the war so I'd have been about eight. It was either the Empire or the Royal Court. I remember the velvet tip-up seats, the beautiful shiny, burning red. And all the bursts of laughter and wanting to understand what the joke was about.

I was sort of prepared for it because my father always listened to "Saturday Night Theatre" on the radio. He'd turn the light out and we'd sit in the firelight just listening to the words. But I wasn't prepared for the music and colour. It was another world—if only you could break into it!

After "Dick Whittington" the world wasn't changed exactly, but I do remember trying to do tap dancing and humming songs. You certainly came out as if you'd been drinking, rather, even as children. A tremendous elation. And it was about that time that my mother saw an advertisement in the Liverpool Echo and I joined "Children's Hour" in Manchester as a child actor, with Billie Whitelaw and Judith Chalmers and the chap that wrote "Coronation Street". Maybe she sensed there was something about the theatre that made things better for me.

MATTHEW BOURNE, DIRECTOR AND CHOREOGRAPHER

At about 13, I was taken to see Angela Lansbury in the musical "Gypsy" in the West End. She was famous. She was in the film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", which had come out the year before. Very exciting. For once we weren't in the Upper Circle but in the back row of the stalls, where Angela Lansbury made her first entrance.

And the show itself made me fall in love with theatre. It was about theatre: one of those pieces that on the surface feels a little bit conventional, but actually has a darkness to it, which turns it into a great show. It's something I've tried to do myself ever since, to entertain on several levels, not just in a frivolous way but on deeper and darker levels as well. It had everything for me. I wanted to be in it - I auditioned to be one of the newsboys. Didn't get the part.

Being in an audience having a great time also made a huge impression. I still love it. I never watch my own work from the side or come in and out. I always sit in the middle, from beginning to end. It's the sharing aspect, the sharing of a great time.

A couple of years later, "A Chorus Line" opened in London. I was at that age when you're assessing who you are, and the show was all about that. It was the discussion each character had about themselves, talking about their lives honestly. That was new to me, and actually more interesting than the dancing. "Gypsy" made me love theatre, but "A Chorus Line" made me grow up and face myself.
(Matthew Bourne's "Nutcracker!" is at Sadler's Wells, London EC1, December 13th to January 20th, then touring the UK. www.matthewbournesnutcracker.com)

CARLOS ACOSTA, DANCER

My father had pushed me into becoming a dancer against my will. I wanted to be a footballer—I didn't care about ballet. But he saw ballet as a way out for me. As a teenager he used to sneak into movie theatres, and saw ballet in the silent movies. He was very taken by it, but it was out of the question for him, because at that time it was only for white people. But ballet was always in the back of his head. So in the end, my first experience of the theatre was also my first show, at ballet school. Towards the end of the year we got to perform for the first time. It was the first time I felt important.
(Carlos Acosta is in his own show at the Coliseum, London WC2, March 31st to April 3rd.
www.eno.org)

PATRICK MARBER, PLAYWRIGHT

I grew up in the London suburbs and we'd always go to the local panto, but I never really liked it and I still don't—it was spooky. From an early age I smelled a rat: I just knew something was being peddled here, that had the whiff of authenticity but also the stink of... bollocks. But I loved the experience of being in the dark and not knowing what was going to happen.

The first play I can really remember was a ghost story, called "The Ghost Train", at the Old Vic or Richmond Theatre. I was gripped. It was about smuggling, about being all alone at a country station, and maybe these people were dead or maybe they were alive and there was a terrifying train that thundered through and you leapt out of your seat. I was very, very taken with that. Terrifying.

The first time I felt like a grown-up going to the theatre was when I was about 14. In the school holidays I'd take myself off on the train to Waterloo and the National Theatre, and see everything that was on. I'd go to the matinee of one show and the evening performance of another, and in between I'd sit in the cafe and read plays and programmes and breathe it all in. It was one way of seeing what the adult world was like. At school, all adults are your enemy, stopping you from doing stuff. And in the theatre I was completely free to sit quietly and watch adults behaving, knowing I wasn't an adult, yet feeling equally that I wasn't a child—and that I could make judgements on them and that my opinion was mine and I was allowed it. I'd be there all day on my own. My secret place. I still like going to the theatre on my own. It felt very exciting. It was exciting.

My favourite line in modern playwriting is in "Our Country's Good" by Timberlake Wertenbaker. In the play some convicts are performing "The Recruiting Officer"; a young woman called Mary is about to go out onto the stage and her line, a propos of nothing, is "I love this!" It moves me just to think about that. It connects you right back to a feeling you had as a child, that something magical and mysterious is about to happen and it might change the way you think and feel forever.

(Patrick Marber's "Dealer's Choice" is at Trafalgar Studios, London SW1, to March 29th.
www.theambassadors.com)

JULIET STEVENSON, ACTOR

My first experience of theatre was being taken to see an amateur production of an Agatha Christie play in Malta, where we lived for three years while my dad was stationed there in the army. My mum was the romantic female lead. And I remember having to be taken out screaming because, at the denouement, a man jumped out of a cupboard and shot her in the arm. An image of my mum being shot in this vulnerable, passive way was just horrible. Too much. It was unbearable to be in the room and watch it. I must have been six.

Children absolutely cannot discriminate between artifice and reality. My first memories of theatre are all about that—terrible at the time, but subsequently wonderful. And at your best, that's what you're doing when you're acting. Of course you're aware that it's a complicated plaiting of artifice and reality, but I know I do my best work when I go into that state—total immersion in the fiction.

My father took me to "The Sound of Music" on one brief trip to England, when I was about seven. It was only a year after the shooting of my mum, but I had no trepidation. The novelty of England, London and this socking great West End theatre overwhelmed me with excitement. Subsequently, when we lived in England, we saw a lot at Windsor repertory theatre, and that's when this passion arose—even though probably a lot of what I saw was really quite cronky. But I do remember the sensation of settling in your seat and waiting for the lights to dim on you, settling into a state of quiet ecstasy. The sense of immersion in fiction was something I wanted from an early age—to get out of your own life and into somebody else's. I don't know why—I had a perfectly happy childhood.

RUFUS NORRIS, THEATRE DIRECTOR

I grew up in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Malaysia, and there the idea of "theatre" was somewhat different. When I was four, we went to a northern Ethiopian medieval walled town. We went outside the walls one night, and there was nothing—just bush and darkness. Some people had flares out there, maybe 30 or 40 of them, probably all tourists. We heard this incredible animal sound and a completely naked man came out of the pitch black—he had long, dreadlocked hair and a long beard, a sort of wildman—and he was making this amazing noise. We formed a wide ring around him and he jabbered away, apparently asking for a volunteer. I felt this push in my back and he grabbed hold of me and pulled me into the centre of the circle. He then put something on my head and backed off, still making this extraordinary noise.

What he was doing was calling the hyenas. This enormous hyena emerged from the black and ate whatever it was off the top of my head—I assume it must have been dried meat. And then wandered off again. I imagine my dad knew what was going to happen, but I certainly didn't. It was very frightening but absolutely fantastic and certainly had a lot to do with the kind of total theatre I ended up making: a big visual world, music and action. Still, I assume the wildman did his thing regularly for the entertainment of the tourists. For all I know, he had a Bentley parked round the corner.

("Herge's Adventures of Tintin", directed by Rufus Norris, is at the Playhouse, London WC2, December 6th to January 12th. www.tintintheshow.co.uk)

SIOBHAN REDMOND, ACTOR

I was always being taken to the theatre. Both my parents loved it. My father lectured in English and Drama and my mum was a very gifted amateur actor and director. I'm reliably informed that I enjoyed interfering with most performances—I was no respecter of the fourth wall. The first thing I saw would have been "Peter Pan" at the King's Theatre, Glasgow. After that, my sister and I were always taken to see Bertha Waddell's Children's Theatre Company. It was a series of little sketches and skits and songs. Bertha would always come to the front of the stage behind the tabs, stick her face through and say "Item number...?" And we'd all shriek, "One!" or "Two!" or "Three!"

I developed a taste for high art very early on. I remember my sister, with no front teeth, crocheting her way through "Hamlet" at the Glasgow Citizens and saying "What's wrong with him anyway?" And me saying, "He's very sad because his dad's dead." And her saying, "Oh really - what's so terrible about that?"

SIR CHRISTOPHER ONDAATJE, AUTHOR AND EXPLORER

I'd just left school for good. It was the summer of 1951. My mother was then living in Wimbledon, so I stayed with her, and she forced my sister and me to get the early train to queue outside St James's Theatre in the West End. She liked to see everything there was to see. The afternoon performance was Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra", with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. The evening performance was Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra", again with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

We got tickets right up high in the gods, and we saw these two incredible performances. The young Vivien Leigh was the most gorgeous sex kitten: you couldn't help but notice it. But I also remember Cleopatra's handmaiden, Ftatateeta, who was played by Elspeth March, Stewart Granger's first wife. She was a big woman and dominated the stage. She was most humorous - I was fascinated by her. Afterwards we hacked our way back to Wimbledon to complete a long, tiring and marvellous day. It was beyond my wildest dreams. I've never seen anything so dramatic since.

TAMARA ROJO, PRINCIPAL DANCER, ROYAL BALLET

My earliest memory is of a production of "Swan Lake", by some Russian company, in Madrid. This was after I'd started learning ballet myself: I started when I was five, after I was invited in to watch a ballet class to get out of the cold.

There wasn't an orchestra—the music was taped—and I didn't know who the main character was. Then I felt some magic once the dancing started, when the blue light appeared and the people became kind of shiny - they were wearing white, of course, so they had a kind of iridescence. But I remember the theatre itself was slightly greasy, and the carpets were sticky. What I loved about ballet at that point was the cleanness of it. At the school, everything was very organised and tidy and the teacher smelled very nice. The barres, the mirrors, the white walls—it had a calm, clean quality to it. So I was rather disappointed to find that you could do ballet in such an awful place.