Alison's mother Pat is an art historian and her dad Seamus is a chartered surveyor. She has two sisters, Jackie and Nicole, and one brother James. Alison is based in London and she spends a lot of time travelling to Italy, where her architect partner Martin is working.

B*Spoke is presenting the Irish premiere of Joanna Murray-Smith's witty and tender play Honour, starring David Horovitch, Barbara Brennan, Fiona O'Shaughnessy and Marcella Plunkett.

Jane on Alison

The first time I met Alison was when she came in to audition for the part of Adele in Jane Eyre at the Gate. About 15 or 16 young actresses came in to audition, and I was reading opposite them. They were all varying degrees of good, and then Alison came in, and auditioned like it was a Greek tragedy.

She was so talented and blew everybody away, and I remember thinking, "Wow, you've got the part."

Actually, I wondered whether she was going to be a bit scary, but once I got to know her, I realised that she was anything but, and was one of the funniest people you could meet. But she did have a mouth like a sewer, which was surprising coming out of this innocent-looking creature with big blue eyes! We had great fun working together, and we ended up working around each other quite a lot after that, including when I played Jane and she played Lydia in Pride and Prejudice at the Abbey in 1995.

We started B*Spoke in 2002, over a cup of tea in the Orwell Lodge. We had both been looking ahead at what was coming up, and realised that there was not much out there for us, so we decided to do our own thing. It meant that we would have a certain amount of control over what we do, and wouldn't be sit-ting there waiting for the phone to ring.

We put on our first play, Elektra, with no funding, apart from 1,500 from Dublin City Council. Alison and I raised the rest ourselves, and people from the media, the arts and our acting commun-ity rowed in and helped us out. We were really lucky because Elektra did very well. Julien Erskine was the very first person to come on board and support us, and Moya Doherty and John McColgan sponsored us and launched us as a company. It took three years to get Arts Council funding, and once that happened, it made things a bit easier.

Working with Alison is great. She's very honest and clear-headed, and always cuts through the sh*t. You could tell her anything, and it wouldn't go anywhere. We fall into our roles very naturally, and our joke is that Alison can't spell and I can't count.

It's stressful to act in a play you're producing, to put it mildly, because you don't need the added burden of feeling responsible for everything around you.

But when we did Tejas Verdes and the budget was caving in, Alison turned to me and said, "Jane, you're just going to have to be in it."

Alison on Jane

When I went to audition for Jane Eyre, I gave it all I had, because I was thinking, it was either this or the dole. Jane was very kind and very dignified and she wasn't at all intimidating. She was the epitome of a leading actress to someone who had just shimmied out of the drama course at Trinity College, and I just looked and learned and watched! You hear about highmaintenance actresses, but most of that's apocryphal, because people like Jane who are wonderful at what they do, usually have very good people skills.

It was in 1995 that Jane and I became real friends, and we used to meet socially in the Westbury for tea, if we weren't gadding about on some stage or other. I'm mainly based in London, so I'd often see Jane if she was working at the Barbican, and I also worked a lot with her sister Barbara. We like to play tennis, so we play until we lose all the balls! Once we spent the whole time gossiping over the net, and never hit a single ball.

When it comes to B*Spoke, Jane sees great potential possibilities along crea-tive lines. She sees scripts and casts, and has a very good sense of people, and then I get out the calculator, and go, "We can't afford that." I did some sales and marketing work before for my uncle's mineral water company, so those skills come in useful. For the first few years, we were the secretary, chairman, sweeper, and gofer, but now, we finally we have much more support, and a better share of the workload.

I remember when we did The Drunkard, which opened the Galway Arts Festival. We brought it, and 22 people, all around the country, and it was a massive success. It was playing at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, after which we were invited into the Olympia by MCD. We had almost no experience at that time, and by the time we got to Dublin, we were both completely and utterly exhausted. I remember us sitting on the steps of the Trinity Pavilion, looking at one another and saying, "What were we thinking?" We were two little shreds by then, but we still managed to laugh about it.

Jane is incredibly calm and patient, and her kindness towards people is immense. We don't do confrontation or raised voices, and I really value that.

She's also very intelligent, and while I have a certain acumen, I'm nowhere near as articulate.

B*spoke is a giant leap of faith, because you choose a production and hope you've put together the right elements and that it turns into something that people will really want to see.

'Honour' is at the Samuel Beckett Theatre until 21 July