Jemima Levick intreview: The direct approach

It was nice of people to keep in touch, thought the director, but why was everyone congratulating her? A call to James Brining, artistic director of Dundee Rep, put her right. "Oh yes, I've been meaning to tell you," he said, going on to explain that Levick's production of Beauty And The Beast was figuring prominently in the nominations for the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) released earlier this week.

Levick's show is in the running for four awards at the CATS ceremony at Edinburgh Festival Theatre on 14 June. Described by one critic as a "thrilling, magical production", Beauty And The Beast has been singled out in the design, direction, children's and overall production categories. "I'm thrilled," says Levick. "A Christmas show gives you a licence to do anything and there's such a charge of excitement from the audience."

It isn't the only thing Levick has to be pleased about just now. Since graduating from Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University in 2002, the 31-year-old has sustained a busy freelance career working between Stellar Quines, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Traverse, Grid Iron, Borderline and the Royal Lyceum. The variety has brought some tremendous opportunities, but when Brining offered her the position of associate director at Dundee Rep it came at the perfect moment.

"This is exactly the step I've been looking for," says Levick, whose holiday came after a run of six productions, including DC Jackson's charming comedy The Ducky, which is on tour. "While I love being freelance, it's so tiring running from one project to another. The great thing about the associate directorship is I can be in one place and develop a relationship with a group of actors."

When Dominic Hill left Dundee for the Traverse at the end of 2007, Brining was careful not to rush into appointing a successor. The two men had proved a highly successful double-act – Brining excelling at musicals and modern classics, such as the CATS-nominated Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, and Hill working wonders on the knottier end of the canon such as the CATS-winning Peer Gynt, now on tour. After bringing in a series of guest directors, Brining turned to Levick to take on the role of full-time associate.

"The Rep will take a risk with things," says Levick, who was born in London and brought up in Bristol. "It doesn't always have to be a massive money spinner; it can be a really interesting play that nobody's seen for a long time. The politics of programming are very different."

Taking up the position in mid-July, with her first production expected in autumn, Levick is looking forward not only to fulfilling her passion for admin, but to flexing her muscles on the kind of large-scale productions made possible by the Rep's permanent ensemble of actors. When she reeled off a list of plays she would like to direct, Brining told her to go back and look for plays with more than four characters.

"You get used to a lowest common denominator budget," she says. "It's so exciting to think I can direct a play with eight people in it. And because there's a little bit more time, it means as a director you can try things out that usually you wouldn't have time to do. Everybody gets into a rhythm in their work, so at this point in my career to be able to play about with that is fantastic."

She hopes in particular to enhance the theatre's reputation for new plays and is heartened to see the company premiering Balgay Hill, by Dundee-born playwright Simon Macallum, in June. Directed by Brining, it is about the life and times of the flamboyant Billy Mackenzie, lead singer of the Associates, who achieved fame with 80s hits such as Party Fears Two and Club Country despite his modest Dundee background. "Because of the work I've done at the Traverse and script development with writers, I'd love to get more new writing at the Rep," says Levick. "I'd also like to do more work for young people."

Shockingly, her appointment makes her the only female stage director in Scotland with artistic responsibility for a building-based producing theatre. Despite the large numbers of women working in arts administration and the large percentage of women buying tickets, it is men who call most of the artistic shots. There are prominent exceptions among touring companies – most notably Vicky Featherstone at the National Theatre of Scotland – but it is a situation that vexes Levick. "When I started at the Traverse the director Roxanna Silbert told me I was going to have to work twice as hard because I was a girl," she says. "I thought she was talking rubbish, but now I think she was right. There don't seem to be any women at the top of the tree. I find it frustrating and endlessly puzzling; there are amazing women doing incredible things, but not enough of them. I find it very saddening."

When she comes to direct Peter Pan at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum this Christmas (a contract agreed before she landed the Dundee job), she believes it will be an example of a female sensibility being applied to a play more normally staged by men. "The female sensibility is hard to pinpoint, but often I see plays that if I had directed them they would be completely different," she says. "Ben Harrison is directing Peter Pan in London and Douglas Irvine has just done it for Visible Fictions and, having spoken to them, I know that I think of it very differently. Every man wants to be Peter Pan, but I'm interested in Wendy and in Hook. Peter's got it wrong as far as I'm concerned."

And when Levick seems to have got so much right, who can argue?

• Peer Gynt, on tour until 27 June; The Ducky, on tour until 13 June; Balgay Hill, Dundee Rep, 9-27 June; Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 14 June; Peter Pan, Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, 27 November-3 January www.dundeereptheatre.co.uk