I was expecting a different man. Someone middle-aged, bowed down with the weight of responsibility that comes with having such a senior position in Irish theatre, with the down-to-business approach to doing interviews that comes from having done too many. Fergus Linehan, appointed last year as festival director, confounds these expectations.

Dressed in a black T-shirt and with tightly cut black hair, Linehan looks less than his 31 years. You would hardly expect him to be the father of two, until he starts talking about his efforts to balance his domestic and professional duties. He has a relaxed, open personality and a youthful energy and enthusiasm about theatre that is infectious. To have reached this professional level in the national theatre scene at such a young age might suggest a meteoric rise, but Linehan quickly dismisses the suggestion.

"I've been working in the theatre forever, literally since I was 15. The first thing I did was running around making cups of tea during Michael Colgan's first year at the Gate. Generally, I used to do stage management, in the Gaiety and the Abbey, and so forth. Then in college, a bunch of us set up a theatre company, which was Pigsback, which subsequently became Fishamble. When I came out of college I ran that for a short period. Then in the early 1990s, I went up to the Tivoli, which was great."

Linehan's curriculum vitae has always had theatre at its centre. With a mother in show business (Rosaleen Linehan), maybe that was inevitable. Yet he is the only one of the family who has followed her into the theatre, after a childhood spent going to the

theatre with his father, also Fergus, the first full-time Arts Editor of The Irish Times. With that early interest in the stage, the English and classics he studied at UCD were quickly left behind.

"I never actually wanted to work anywhere else but the theatre. I still don't. Some people go on to film and television, but I just want to work in the theatre," he says.

While this is the first year that Linehan has been wholly responsible for the programming of the festival, he has spent the past few years working closely with Tony O Dalaigh, director for the past 10 years. he Linehan became increasingly involved in the programming side, until, in June of last year, he was appointed as O Dalaigh's successor. He came to the job with a very clear concept of his role.

"I'm not a director, basically I'm a producer. The role of the producer is to be the conduit between the audiences and the artist, with a foot in both camps. You're not completely saying, `I just want to please the crowds', and then at the same time, you're not actually in the rehearsal room. That balance should be struck."

Linehan's criteria for choosing festival productions are very clear. In his choice of Irish shows, his rule of thumb is straightforward: "The festival almost used to act as an umbrella event: you got a snapshot of what was going on in Irish theatre. That served a real purpose. What we need to do now is to provoke a programming that wouldn't normally happen. I want people to know that they're at a festival show, that there's a line running through it. This should be a time of year when we step outside what we normally do."

On the subject of the omission of dance and stand-up comedy from the programme, he says that he didn't want to include them if they couldn't be properly represented: "I'd hate to see them as a kind of marginalised tag-on at the back," he says, "besides, it was important to maintain our focus on what we were doing".

But this year's programme is something that is beginning to occupy him less and less. Linehan's work is done for this year, and his thoughts are already turning to next year's festival. With ticket sales much improved, thanks to the Celtic Tiger, it is a good time to be festival director. But will he stay at the helm?

"I see this as a gig I'm doing for three years. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to do more than three. Festivals can lend themselves to a sort of institutional stability. It is really important to maintain your sense of urgency."