For many long years now, with the creation of the Kneehigh company, Emma Rice and Mike Shepherd have been making innovative theatre, grassroots theatre, in the first place for the people of Cornwall, in schools and in village halls, in marquees in muddy fields, every show crafted by a troupe of formidably talented playmakers, and actors who at the same time are often dancers, singers, musicians, acrobats. With every show their reputation burgeoned, and with every show they took greater and greater risks, breaking the mould, crashing though glass ceilings, bringing new life to theatre.

They were not always successful, but that is the nature of risk. They experimented, they dared, but nothing was ever done simply for effect. With every play they were trying to tell their story with integrity, confiding it to their audience, inviting them to join in the spirit of story-making in the theatre, to shine a different light on stories and plays, old and new. Audiences in Cornwall loved their work, and over the years their reputation as a company grew, and spread. In time they took their shows on tour, to London, to Broadway, to the world. All to great acclaim. But they never left their roots behind. They made theatre for the people. They did not play safe, ever. They reached out to ever wider, ever more enthusiastic audiences, filled theatres with families and children, the theatregoers of the future, the play-makers of the future.

So knowing full well the free spirit that Emma Rice is, how she works as a director, how in her productions, convention is stood so often on its head, what an inspired and original risk-taker she is, the board of the Shakespeare’s Globe, in London, appointed her as artistic director.

Now, after a season when box-office receipts were superlative, when she brought to the productions at the Globe all they must have expected, her energy, her inventiveness, her originality, they decide she is simply too original, too inventive.

I saw her A Midsummer Night’s Dream, witnessed how engaged the audience was, how they loved it and were continually surprised by it. I heard teenagers walking out after it was over, wowing over it. I heard gales of laughter, and the deep silence of sadness and wonder. And yes, the lights and sound were of today, in this wooden O of this replica Globe. And yes, as in Shakespeare’s day, the groundlings caught the spirit of the play, and the actors played to them, wonderfully, confiding the story to them, as they might in a village hall, or in marquee in Cornwall.

Yes, Rice took risks, cut a line or two here and there, changed sexual orientation further to complicate matters, which only added to confuse and amuse us all the more. It was a riot of an evening, a joyous evening, and it was for me Shakespeare at its best, not reinvented but told again, now, differently, with lights.

The board of the Globe must have known that Rice was never going to treat Shakespeare as holy writ, neither should she. He was a great writer, but we are allowed to adapt his work. After all, he freely adapted the work of others. Stories are for the telling and the retelling. I know this personally. I tell stories myself, and sometimes they are adapted for the stage. The best adaptations have always been when directors took the greatest risks. Nick Hytner, Tom Morris and Marianne Elliot climbed out on to the riskiest limb possible when they took an unknown story of mine, War Horse, set in the first world war, told by a horse, and created a play where puppets would take centre stage. Amazing puppets, but puppets all the same. Unheard of. Well, it worked. Did all right.

Rice and Shepherd took another of my stories, The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, and made it into the most wonderful play, which was first performed in that marquee in a muddy field in Cornwall, and then Rice brought it to the Globe as part her “Wonder” season. This was the very first family show there had ever been at the Globe: mould-breaking. Horror of horror, kids at the Globe not seeing Shakespeare. But how they loved it … And you can be sure they loved the Globe; they will be back to see the great works of the bard. But sadly now not to be directed by Rice. A shame, a crying shame for us and for them. We need such spirits in our theatre-making. We need inspired directors to take risks, to bring theatre to the people, to bring more people to the theatre.