I first became aware of Peter Stein's production of Faust when Fiach MacConghail, the cultural director of Ireland's participation in EXPO 2000 in Hanover, suggested that I approach him with a view to arranging a short residency at his rehearsals. Though I hadn't seen any of Peter Stein's work before, I was aware of his reputation and I thought it would be a great opportunity to see him at work.

The scale of the project interested me. Stein was staging both parts of Faust with a total performance time of 21 hours. Of course it's also a great story - selling your soul to the devil and all that carry-on.

The residency was arranged for three weeks, beginning at the end of April. The timing was brilliant because I was just coming to the end of a contract in the Abbey and it seemed like a bit of serendipity in terms of a breath of fresh air, a new approach, leaving the country.

For my first day at rehearsals I travelled out to Eichenbrink, west of Hanover, where the ensemble had been working since September in an abandoned factory space. They were moving on that day from the factory to a purpose-built venue on the EXPO site to begin the initial build-up to technical rehearsals. I don't speak German so I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying as people began to arrive, even when they made an attempt to find out who I was. It's a humbling experience when all of a sudden you're presented with a foreign language, complete strangers and an international figure like Stein.

Eventually my contact in the ensemble administration found me. I was introduced to Stein as "Jason Byrne from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin." He looked at me, took my hand and acknowledged "From the Abbey." That was the only interaction that I had with him for the whole three weeks, apart from occasional eye contact. He was a busy man.

The acting ensemble was composed mainly of young actors and recent graduates, with the exception of Bruno Ganz and some of the senior players. Ganz was fantastic, even though I didn't understand what he was saying, I could see intention and I believed him - good acting is good acting. Equally there were less capable actors on the stage who were up to the tricks that you would associate with generic bad acting. I thought Ganz was very detailed, sincere, and truthful. He had the weight for Faust.

The Faust Halle on the EXPO site is a big warehouse staffed by lots of ASMs and a full-time technical crew. I felt it was all a bit clean, a bit sterile. Everything was brand-new and purpose-built and you could see that a lot of money had gone into it.

After a while I made friends with one of the young actors, a German called Patrick O'Beirne whose grandparents were Irish. He would sit beside me in rehearsals and whisper translations of Stein's directions. This had to be done very quietly because nobody spoke in rehearsals.

For Stein everything was in the text. From what I could glean his big concern was that the kind of colloquial delivery that the actors were engaging in was not rising to Goethe's language. They were reducing it to a naturalistic, pedestrian musicality of expression. That is a problem, I think, that actors from all walks of life experience when confronted with heightened language - "classical text", for want of a better expression. Stein's attention was to how the text lived in the actors. There is a temptation with a lot of actors to reduce the size of things in order to connect with a certain level of truth. This stems from a fear of being perceived as "hammy" or a notion that big sometimes means less truthful. Seeing Stein's preoccupation with this was a sort of vindication for me. I thought to myself, well, that's a problem that we all face.

The rehearsal room was much the same as any I have experienced, with perhaps more of a sense of deference to the director. There was definitely a sense that Stein was the main man and that the production was being driven by his vision. Stein would raise his voice, even shout occasionally, and actors didn't seem to mind that. Maybe he was just passionate about the work. He talks a lot, endlessly. Most of the time this takes the form of a lecture, other times he will actually perform for the actors, giving them readings of the lines.

I thought that his impulses and physical instincts were very astute and he was a good communicator in that way. Obviously he wasn't looking for imitation of what he was doing, or mimicry. That would be ridiculous. You could really see the effect of that aspect of his direction on those actors who were sensitive to it.

I was impressed by the grandeur and the scale of the production but I worried that something would be obscured, that detail or truth on a moment-to-moment basis was going to be lost. As an approach to a work of that nature, the presentation was fine, but I'm not sure that it's my cup of tea. Watching rehearsals, I felt surer about my own particular taste for close contact between actor and spectator, a need for intimacy in the theatre. Stein's type of direction and interaction with the actors is not the language I am in pursuit of at the moment. I'm in favour of less discussion, less talk about meaning, less analysis.

Full performances of Faust run at Expo until Sept 17th. Faust I and II run until Sept 24th.

A new Loose Canon production based on the paintings of Caravaggio opens in the Space Upstairs of Project on August 22nd