Presented by Knock and Run Theatre and opening at the Royal Exchange, Newcastle, on July 24, Circumference of a Squirrel, written by John Walch and now directed by Van Gaal, certainly sounds as though it originates from an obscure, far away place.

Yet when Van Gaal became more familiar with the American work, it was the intimacy and familiarity of its themes that most resonated with her own life. As a monologue and a meditation on grief and maturation, to be singularly performed by James Chapman, Van Gaal has found her experience as its director to be an enriching but challenging one.

"Working one-on-one with an actor is such a different experience", Van Gaal says. "It's so personal but it also presents an interesting contrast between feeling relaxed and casual and then really connected to the actor themselves. In the past, when I have worked with him, James has been such a heightened and energetic actor. Now it is all about pulling it back and stripping his performance into a very vulnerable and nuanced act."

This vulnerability, to misfortune and the inner intensities of the bereavement it causes, is cleverly embodied in the character of Chester. It is clever because Chester, unlike his audience, is largely oblivious to how his grief has paved a circular path - one that inevitably leads him back to the trauma of his childhood and, curiously, a painful encounter his father once had with a cranky squirrel. The encounter leaves the young Chester up in the air, suspended on a circular inner tube whose shape represents much more than just a makeshift swing.

Like he is in that childhood moment, alone and at some defining moment in his personal trajectory, does the adult Chester tell his story to his audience. And working alongside Chapman to enliven this journey has become something of a defining moment for Van Gaal herself, a director who is accustomed to multiple actors performing on busier and more crowded stage spaces.

"Lots of the things I have done in the past have relied on chemistry and energy," Van Gaal explains. "I'm normally used to directing movement, to shifting the space with a more 'in-your-face' style. But to create that same energy in an internal way has been the trick with this play. James can't rely on interacting with any other actors so his energy has had to be refined and brought down. It's certainly been an interesting process."

And if only a couple of performers and theatre directors in Newcastle are authorities on the process of managing energies, be it their own or those of the actors in their casts, then Van Gaal is undoubtedly among them. Having appeared in more than 80 Newcastle productions, in a local career spanning 28 years, her creative presence in any show has become shorthand for expertise and inventiveness.

In 2017, Van Gaal was the recipient of the Tantrum Theatre Trajectory Residency, a role that culminated in Welcome, a play she created for the Newcastle Crack Theatre Festival. Last year she directed the acclaimed Knock & Run production Year of the Rooster, for which she earned one of her many CONDA nominations. Having recently accepted the 2019 role of Tutor for Hunter Drama, she wasted no time in devising and directing Perceptions, a work that deftly navigated the complex, duelling themes of belonging and authentic identity.

Van Gaal believes that it's been these, more recent productions, and her current work directing James in such an intimate and ultimately confronting solo show, that have come to symbolise her creative mindset; a passion for the challenging over the more popular and customary works of contemporary theatre. Just as Chester progresses, in his idiosyncratic way, towards his own revelations, so too has Van Gaal found a singular truth amid the fiction.

"It's been a process that has evolved for me over the last two years. I've started to find my voice as a director. I know now what I'm trying to achieve and along the way I'm finding that I'm not scared to keep experimenting with the new. I just don't want to play it safe."