Political correctness may have forced Mad Cow to change its name to Prime Cut, but the 10-year-old Belfast independent theatre company still hasn't lost its boundless energy. Its director, Jackie Doyle, talks to Jane Coyle

Ten years ago, an exotic and rather frisky young creature bounded on to the Northern Ireland theatre scene. Mad Cow Productions was founded by four kindred spirits - director Simon Magill, producer Jackie Doyle, set designer Stuart Marshall and lighting designer Aidan Lacey.

Their shared aim was to showcase challenging contemporary drama by internationally-known playwrights and to bring new standards of design and production to their work.

A decade on, the company has changed its name to Prime Cut and has known its share of triumph and tragedy - triumph in its ongoing string of critically-acclaimed, award-winning productions; tragedy in the sudden death of the genius who was Aidan Lacey.

There have been other changes, too. Most significantly, Magill left the company in 1997 and moved to the Lyric Theatre, where he was acting artistic director for a year. Last October, he was appointed artistic director of Tinderbox, an independent with which Prime Cut has much in common.

Of the original quartet, Marshall remains as resident set designer, but it is Jackie Doyle who has emerged from her producing role to take on the mantle of artistic director and driving force. Clearly a powerful, inspirational presence in the rehearsal room, this quiet-spoken woman from the north of England would much prefer to allow her work to talk for her.

Reluctant to claim individual credit even for some of her finest directing achievements, she looks back on the past 10 years with a mixture of surprise and satisfaction.

"Back in 1992, we were all working as freelances. We gradually came to an understanding that we wanted to do work that was different, more challenging and where design played an important part," she recalls. "Our first production was Jim Cartwright's Two, chosen as much for it being a smashing piece of writing as for the fact that it is a two-hander and, therefore, cheap!

"Our ambition was to do plays by people like Ariel Dorfman and Athol Fugard, writers who are rarely performed here. So we bit the bullet and went for it. Our second show was Fugard's A Place with the Pigs, another double-hander, beautifully performed by Lalor Roddy and Ger Ryan. It remains my favourite of all our productions.

"But money was - and continues to be - a difficulty; and there was, inevitably, a level of pragmatism involved in our choice of play. We had to work around that but, when you think about it, it is not so very difficult. Death and the Maiden has three actors; Skylight has two, so does Brilliant Traces. And so on. Looking back, though, I would have to say that, brilliant though the plays were, there was a definite reluctance on the part of the public to take a risk on unfamiliar names and titles. I have vivid memories of A Place with the Pigs playing in Derry to two people - both of them members of our Board!"

Still, Mad Cow continued to battle on. In 1994, the company took a huge artistic and financial risk in commissioning the distinguished left-wing playwright Trevor Griffiths to write a piece as its offering for the Belfast Festival at Queen's. Griffiths was impressed by the purpose and ambition of the approach, and agreed to come to Belfast to direct Who Shall Be Happy? himself.

"I had always been very interested in the French Revolution," says Doyle. "Trevor had done something on that theme for television, and we went to him and asked him to write something similar for the stage. It was a crazy thing to do at the time, because there was little support for the idea and we were signing ourselves up to major commitments. We couldn't even find a venue that was interested."

Then the Old Museum Arts Centre came forward, and the idea for creating a total theatrical experience started to take shape. The entire space became an abandoned Parisian salon and the design team set about trashing it, distressing the paintwork and constructing a prison cage in the centre. Suddenly it seemed like absolutely the right place to be, given the Old Museum's long history of learning and thinking, into which the philosophical themes of the play fitted perfectly."

Griffiths was ecstatic about the performance of his ground-breaking play by Stanley Townshend and Kulvinder Singh and sang the praises of the company at the launch in Belfast.

"These people live like church mice," he declared. "But they are the real thing. Every city in Britain should have a Mad Cow in it."

Ironically, it was this play which toured to England and Denmark and clocked up a Barclays Bank best actor award for Townshend, which precipitated the end of Mad Cow and the beginning of Prime Cut.

"There was pressure on us from funding organisations to change the name," explains Doyle. "We had just been to Denmark, and we were looking to undertake more international touring. At the time, it seemed rather insensitive to be exporting a product from Northern Ireland called Mad Cow, so we changed it to Prime Cut. In my opinion, it was a mistake. We have had to re-establish the name and people who have not been familiar with the company from the start, do not realise that they are one and the same thing. Also, Mad Cow has a wacky, mad sort of ring to it, which people remember."But . . . ." She shrugs her shoulders resignedly.

Still, Prime Cut has been good for Doyle, and she undoubtedly has been good for it. She says that none of the four founding members could have imagined that, 10 years down the line, the company would still be going - and with such momentum.

Typically, she downplays her own part in it, declaring it to be something that " . . . just kind of happened". Yet, when you persuade her to think a bit more about it, she concedes that it is not really surprising that a trained stage manager from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and drama graduate of London University's Goldsmith's College should find herself among a fast growing group of women theatre directors.

"I don't like playing the female card," she says, "But it's true that there are lots of good women directors out there now - people like Katie Mitchell, Lynne Parker, Carol Moore and, of course, Derborah Warner. When I left England, most directors seemed to be male, public-school and Oxbridge educated. There was an established network. But that has changed, and I think that in Ireland, the situation probably never existed. I came to Belfast in 1991 to work on a production of Fontamara with director Vanessa Fielding, whom I had worked with in Oxford and at the Young Vic. My contract was for six months - and I'm still here.

"People ask me why it took me so long to start directing, but I think it was because I was too good a producer! I never thought of myself as a director - it is rather a big thing to say of yourself. But it has been such a privilege, working on great plays and with the fine actors this company has been able to attract."

HER output for Prime Cut has been prolific and eclectic, and an enviable trust has been built up between company and public, to the extent that her risky decision to do Mark Ravenhill's controversial play Shopping and F***ing paid off, and it did great business, but also attracted unexpectedly warm praise from all who saw it. There is now eager anticipation at the opening of another play, new to Irish audiences: David Mamet's American Buffalo.

It should form an interesting counterpart to another modern American classic, Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, for which Kate O'Toole was judged best actress in the 2001 Barclays Bank Theatre Awards.

"David Mamet is a magnificent writer," says Doyle. "He presents the American language with such immediacy, and I really admire his grasp of what makes theatre work. I decided to do this play, which is a sharp commentary on capitalism, about 10 months ago, long before the events of last September. In the light of that, it seems to have taken onnew resonance and relevance."

So, as opening night approaches and Prime Cut goes into its 10th anniversary year, she must be feeling pretty mellow about the prospects for this new production.

"Oh, no!" she exclaims, alarmed at the very thought. "What's gone is gone. You can never rest on your laurels in this business. You're only as good as your current production. It's fingers crossed, as usual."

American Buffalo previews at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, on Thursday and runs until Februrary 2nd before undertaking an eight-week Irish tour to Monaghan, Armagh, Lisburn, Enniskillen, Coleraine, Cookstown, Letterkenny, Galway, Dún Laoghaire, Longford, Kilkenny, Cork and Limerick. Information: 048-90645101.