Steve Marmion at Soho Theatre – ‘I am most excited by our work when it is a surprise to an audience’. Photo: Richard Davenport

ARTISTIC director at Soho Theatre Steve Marmion says the thing that makes the Dean Street venue special is that “it makes work that other people don’t”.

“We seek out unheard voices and give them a platform in the theatre capital of the world,” he says. “I am most excited by our work when it is a surprise to an audience.”

With six different shows on each night, he says the Soho theatre bar becomes a hub, where audiences collide and share their thoughts on what they have just seen.

Storytelling is at the core. In his view, you know something is a good show if it “gets people talking” – and for a show to do that, it needs to have “insight and resonance”.

Past shows such as Fleabag, Doctor Brown and First Love is the Revolution are all good examples of this, he says – “all deeply funny and surprisingly moving”.

Before joining Soho Theatre, Steve spent time freelancing with the Royal Shakespeare Company and spent some time on Broadway. He studied at the University of Glamorgan and then taught in the Valleys, before becoming a youth director in Theatre Royal Plymouth and Sherman Theatre in Cardiff.

Since Steve joined the theatre in 2010, audience sizes have grown from 70,000 to 200,000 a year. “It’s the best job in the world for me,” he says. “I get to work with amazing new talent and heroes side by side. No two days are the same. And while it is all-encompassing – life, soul, body, the lot – and people may even feel compelled to tell you about their new show at the urinal, you get to give people a break – which, if they are good people, then it doesn’t get much more rewarding.”

When he does get a little down time, he avoids watching drama or comedy on TV as it “feels like work”, opting instead for quiz shows and sport.

He also has more than 100 fish to keep him company at his home in west London, where he tries to find the time to do a little writing.

Discussing the theatre’s future, Steve says: “Stories will continue to change the world by shaping our hearts and minds, we will continue to tell stories. Whether we are forced to dress them up in sparkles to make them commercial or able to continue being brave and beholden only to the work will be up to the audiences and politicians. We won’t be going anywhere though.

“Soho has always changed. It is what makes it Soho. It sets trends and agendas for the rest of the world. We must make sure that change is the right kind, and not just sold to the highest bidder.”

He recalled some of his earliest memories of Soho: “As a kid we used to go and see Liverpool play every week, so my first introduction to London was Cup Finals. My dad and his mates from Liverpool would take us to Soho for a Chinese then we’d go to the game. When I moved to London 10 years ago, it seemed welcoming, edgy, and a bit like home.”

To this day, he has a season ticket at Anfield.