Jim Meads saw his first stage play five years ago. It was a life-changing experience that led him to university, the RSC and now to forming his forming his own theatre company. Steve Pratt talks to the director at the cutting edge of regional theatre.

Seeing a production of Arthur Miller's play Death Of A Salesman five years ago at Newcastle Theatre Royal was a revelation for Jim Meads. Apart from being taken to pantomimes, this was the first play he'd ever seen on stage and the effect was electric. "I was carried away by it," he recalls.

"I'd read a lot of plays. When I was working in a shoe shop, I'd get them from the library and read them in my dinner hour.

"Death Of A Salesman starred Alun Armstrong and at the end it was so emotionally engaging. Everyone was so moved at the same time. I saw that what you do on stage has an immediate effect on people. It's a two-way thing."

The moment was, he says, a "light bulb thing" - one of those moments in life when something in your head clicks and you see something clearly for the first time.

Bishop Auckland-born Meads, who'd left school at 16 with no qualifications, realised what he wanted to do with his life. Since graduating from Sunderland University with a first in drama and English, he's worked with two of the country's biggest stage groups, the Royal Shakespeare Company and London's Royal Court Theatre, and formed his own North-East theatre company to showcase talent from the region who would otherwise have to leave the area to find work.

Now that company, All You Can Eat, is premiering drama A Place Called Milan, which looks at what it was like to be 16-25 in 1946 and the effect on women whose husbands went away to war. A workshop version was first seen at Live Theatre, Newcastle. The expanded, full-length play was developed through Northern Stage based at Newcastle Playhouse.

Not bad going for someone who never saw a play until he was in his early twenties. "Going to the theatre wasn't in my culture. Even going to university wasn't in my culture," says Meads, 28. "And, in a way, that gives me an advantage because I'm producing plays I like and which are very influenced by cinema."

After leaving school, he did a variety of jobs - supermarket worker, door-to-door salesman selling double glazing, and window cleaner. Then he met some students doing part-time work in the shoe shop where he was employed and thought, 'If they can go to university so can I'.

He took his A-levels at night school and, at 22, went to study at Sunderland as a mature student. "I'd never done any drama before. I was doing English and had an option for the drama course. The flippant answer as to why I did is was that the girls on that course were much more social and better looking," he says.

He acted at university but stopped when he realised others were better than him. Eventually, it dawned on him that he could direct and get paid for it. The idea of teaching was put aside, although he's currently course leader for the acting course at Newcastle College of Peforming Arts, where he's directed several productions.

"To me, directing is the same as teaching but with a smaller class. It's helping these young actors get better," he says.

He owes his start in theatre to winning a place in the finals of the Channel 4 Youth Directors Scheme. "After university, I sent letters off to theatres around the country saying I was available for directing and got a lot of replies saying, 'Naff off'," he recalls.

"When I rang the Arts Council, they told me about the Channel 4 bursary. I sent away the application form and never thought anything more of it. Then I was called down to London and got through to the final stages. I couldn't believe it."

Ian Rickson, who was on the judging panel, offered Meads a job at London's Royal Court, where he's artistic director. He found himself working alongside director Max Stafford-Clark on productions of Rita, Sue And Bob Too and A State Affair, which toured nationwide.

Withing a week of finishing at the Royal Court, he was in Stratford-upon-Avon on the first Northern Arts/RSC directing bursary. He worked alongside current artistic director Michael Boyd on his production of Romeo And Juliet.

"What those things did was confirm that I needed to come back up here and do something on my own," he says. The result was All You Can Eat.

"I see so many gifted actors who have to leave the region to find work elsewhere. A lot give up acting because they can't get any opportunities around here. I felt that was wrong and a rich seam was here to be exploited. I hope people will recognise the quality of the acting from quite a young group of people in the production."

A Place Called Milan was developed through interviews with elderly people in the region about their experiences during and after the Second World War. Northern Stage artistic director Alan Lyddiard liked the workshop production and asked Meads to mount a full-length staging.

"I thought what could be the most untrendy thing for a group of young people to do. It would be to interview retired people about their lives, and try to make it as immediate and modern as we could," he says.

"We spoke to a selection of retired groups. The characters are composites of the people we interviewed. On the last day of the interviews, one of the women said it was lovely to talk and that they'd have told people before, but no one had ever asked. Some of the stories were quite powerful and emotional for them."

Asked how it felt to live in those times, one said "imagine a cross between September 11 and the last night of your holidays", or as Meads puts it, "These people were swept along by worldwide events but, at the same time, were living for the moment."

The drama is intercut with musical numbers from the period, the sort of thing people were watching on cinema screens.

"The main story is a soldier coming back from the war to his wife. They were newlyweds when he went away. This is almost the whole story someone from Sunderland told us. He'd been up to stuff, his wife had been up to stuff. Everything had changed," says Meads.

"We were told about a girl who got pregnant but didn't know she was until she went into labour. She knew nothing about sex. She said to the midwife, 'Where does it come out?' and she replied, 'The same place it went in'.

"We were given two letters. One was written by a local man who was killed in Italy. It was sent posthumously to his wife. In it, he tried to sum up how he felt.

"There was also a letter from a father to his daughter, who was only five at the time. We tell her story - how she copes with that and adolescence.

"Another character is based on a woman who worked in a cinema and imagined her husband up there on screen. When he came home she was disappointed he wasn't Clark Gable."

Meads, who now lives in Newcastle, plans to stay in the region and develop the company. He has a lot of respect for other theatre companies in the region, but believes there should be more. A Place Called Milan is just the start. "It's like a cast of future stars. It's a showcase for all of us and what we do," he says.

l A Place Called Milan is at Newcastle Playhouse's Gulbenkian Studio until November 2. The show also plays Bishop Auckland Town Hall on November 30.