“There is a part of me,” says Alan Gilsenan, “that is slightly repelled by the theatre.”

Gilsenan is a filmmaker. He made his name with an angry young man’s documentary about 1980s Ireland, ‘The Road to God Knows Where’; his more recent documentary series, such as ‘The Asylum’ and ‘The Hospice’, have been groundbreaking treatments of sensitive issues on primetime television. Coming from someone so steeped in the hard-nosed worlds of journalism and tv, such an aversion to theatre might not be surprising. But Gilsenan is currently in the middle of directing a play.

“I have a love/hate relationship with the theatre,” he explains. “A huge amount of theatre is shockingly banal and self referential. Irish theatre is largely stuck in aspic. Sometimes it seems that other aspects of contemporary art haven’t happened at all – there’s something still a bit fuddy-duddy about it all.

“It’s still obsessed with naturalism and realism, and it’s like the audience doesn’t expect much more.”

Gilsenan, who is mid-rehearsals on ‘Knives and Hens’, a play by Scotsman David Harrower, and has directed plays consistently, alongside his more high profile film work, leavens his criticism with laughter, and self-conscious apologies for sounding “pretentious”, and for “betraying” theatrical colleagues.

“I understand the difficulties of it. But there’s a certain predictability about a night in the theatre.”

But Gilsenan’s tirade against the theatre turns quickly into a plea for its importance.

His idea of the theatre has always been “slightly magical”, and he traces his passion for it to a combination of the influences of light opera – which his father loved – and the rituals of Catholicism. “It’s ‘The Desert Song’ meets Benediction and incense and crosses being carried at Easter.”

While his documentary work immerses him in society, in the lives and issues of those around him, theatre “allows you to engage with a whole other imaginative area.”

“There are parts of our live that aren’t comprehensible. They are the places where poetry touches, or music touches, or theatre touches.

“That’s why people go to the theatre, or listen to music… because they want something that touches on their inner confusion: they’re trying to make sense of their inner lives. When a crux comes in somebody’s life – when somebody dies, or a baby is born, or someone falls in love – what do people look for? It’s usually in the arts: a poem that celebrates something; a song that helps you deal with a break up.”

“Drama allows for all that confusion and ambiguity with which are lives are awash.”

This nuanced sense of drama, though, is something absent from much of today’s media.

“Everything has to be turned into entertainment and every argument has to be turned into a polar disagreement. You rarely hear in any aspect of the media a moderate discussion of grey areas: it’s all black and white. But the most interesting things are in the grey areas.

“We’re all being forced to be so productive and focussed, and every sort of vagueness is perceived as weakness. But there’s something far more honest and valuable in an understanding of the extraordinary complexity of life and of the difficulty of arriving at any fixed position on anything.

“The person who is 110% sure of their view is a very scary person.”

These conflicts – between the demand for certainty and the persistence of doubt; between the pre-eminence of facts and the ongoing power of ritual – find echo in the play Gilsenan is currently directing, ‘Knives and Hens’, the mid-1990s breakthrough play for David Harrower (whose ‘Blackbird’ was successfully produced in Dublin by the same company, Landmark, two years ago). (‘Knives and Hens’ is on till November 28 at Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre, with a stellar cast of Lorcan Cranitch, Vincent Regan and Catherine Walker; tickets and information from the nearby Project Arts Centre at (01) 881 9613 or www.projectartscentre.ie.)

Set in a pre-industrial, rural world, Harrower’s play is a love triangle of sorts, which examines the power of language and learning, and the conflicts between a world governed by myth and superstition, and one governed by modern rationality.

“I couldn’t easily tell you what it’s about,” he says, “which is the sign of a good play. What’s ‘Hamlet’ about? It’s about many things, depending on how you look at it.

“On one level, this is a simple, elemental folk take, but on another it has an extraordinary range of ideas,” he says.

“It’s about the struggle between a mystical way of looking at the world, believing in things like God or fate, and a way of looking at the world that is rational and intellectual and clear. There’s something of that in all of us today.”

For all Gilsenan’s criticism of the predictability of much of Irish theatre, he is nonetheless staging a 1990s hit British play in a venue in Temple Bar – superficially, a very conventional production. ‘Knives and Hens’ is, though, “a great play”, he says, “one that might still be performed in a hundred years”, and he hopes that staging it well will in itself offer something new.

“I hope that there will be an element in this production that transcends the norm. I hope… I’m not convinced.”

It seems appropriate that someone who asserts the fundamental value of uncertainty is willing to admit his uncertainty over his own artistic success. In the theatre, success is never guaranteed; in ‘Knives and Hens’ though, Gilsenan has at least assembled many of the crucial ingredients.