From the Lyric Theatre’s recently appointed artistic director Sean Holmes to Dominic Hill, who rules the roost at Edinburgh’s Traverse, the theatre world is packed with graduates of the Orange Tree’s trainee director scheme, writes Will Gore.

Jo Combes, an associate director at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, is another one to add to the list. Combes left the Orange Tree eight years ago but is now back at the in-the-round venue to direct Susan Glaspell’s Alison’s House.

“It feels like an amazing homecoming,” she says. “I have done plenty of other things since leaving but it is so lovely to be back. It is such a great space to work in and there is a lovely family of people here – the atmosphere is relaxed and it is infectious.”

Each season, the Orange Tree takes on two trainee directors, giving them the chance to work as assistant directors on a number of productions before they sign off with a showcase production of their own.

Combes says this experience, particularly the opportunity she was given to learn about directing in-the-round, stood her in good stead as she embarked upon her career.

“How I work has really been informed by my training at the Orange Tree,” she says. “Since leaving, I have always worked in-the-round at the Royal Exchange and don’t know how to do it any other way.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Alison’s House is set after the death of an influential female poet and deals with the fallout from the discovery of a cachet of her previously undiscovered poems that seem to reveal her love for a married man.

In writing the play, Glaspell took inspiration from the life of Emily Dickinson and, although her poems are not used in the play, Combes says the links are unmistakeable.

“Glaspell took a lot of information from a biography of Dickinson and much of the detail in the play comes from that, for example, the fact Dickinson always used to wear a white dress,” she adds.

Since 1996, the Orange Tree has dedicated itself to bringing Glaspell’s plays to a wider audience as she has long been overshadowed by the giants of the American theatre, from Eugene O’Neill, whose early work was staged by her company, the Provincetown Players, through to Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.

Yet Combes says Glaspell’s writing more than holds its own when compared to the work of these big hitters.

“The interesting thing in her writing is how she deals with social change,” Combes adds. “There is a lovely theme in this play of children challenging how their parents see the world and I think that is completely of the 1930s and American theatre.

“All the best American plays of the past 100 years deal with this subject and that allows Alison’s House to relate to other great plays such as Death of a Salesman or All My Sons.”

Alison’s House, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, October 7 to November 7, visit orangetreetheatre. co.uk