As associate director for New Adventures Company, Scott Ambler works with Matthew Bourne. Elisa Bray talks to the performer about his role as staff director and character Prentice in Bourne's latest show Play Without Words, on at Bromley's Churchill Theatre from May 11 to 15.

- How did you begin your dancing career? I graduated from the Rombert Ballet School in 1984. I have done a bit of everything but, quite frankly, I haven't got the legs for tights. I decided on the contemporary sphere.

- How did you meet Matthew Bourne?

I met him a couple of years ago. I thought his company, Adventures in Motion Pictures, sounded like the type of company I wanted to work for. When I auditioned for the third time, I think Matthew got sick of me pestering him and I started work with him 1991. I have been involved in every company project since.

- What makes you work so well together?

We are similar in age and background so we have the same reference points for talking. We have the same sense of humour. We knew that whole era of the late 50s and 60s the old musicals and black-and-white movies. It is all lot to do with class, gender and political changes at a time just before the Austin Powers swinging-60s thing. There was a weird feeling a conflict of new styles coming and post-war values going and there were a lot of angry young men in the literature.

- How did you deal with the fame you acquired from your role as Prince in Matthew Bourne's hugely successful and controversial Swan Lake of 1994?

It was the company's first big success. It was unique and a particular take on an old classic. Because all the swans were played by men it was the first time ballet made the front page of a newspaper! From then on people became interested and it became a popular company. Some people treated me differently, through envy or because they didn't know how to talk to me.

- How did Play Without Words hit the National Theatre?

It was an experiment commissioned by the National Theatre's Transformation season. They asked lots of companies to try an idea. We had no expectations of success. We had to make it in five weeks the set, costumes, everything. Normally it is 12 weeks! And we had to perform it in three. That is all we thought we would do but luckily we became the hit of the season, winning two Oliviers.

- How have you improved the piece from its first showing in 2002?

We tidied bits up and made the ending more of a choice for the audience who follow the characters and choose from four alternative outcomes. You can sit back or you can invest in the characters and follow stories and decide which path they would have taken. It is like the modern split-screen movie. The events are shown through the different characters' eyes and the audience can decide which ending is most appropriate. Sometimes you make your own fate and it is taken out of your hands. Particularly in this show, the characters represent life mapped out and then something happens which disrupts everything and what they thought was important to them can change.

- What has been your strangest role?

I have been really lucky in all I have done. All the projects have been challenging and demanded a lot. I have played the Prince in Swan Lake, the cartoon king of Sweetieland and a fat dead person in Car Man. They built me a padded belly and I got killed by a monkey wrench eight times a week! For 18 months I used prosthetics and fake blood. Now I am playing a version of Dirk Bogarde in The Servant, by Harold Pinter.