These are a few of my favourite things: Gordon Barr, theatre director

FILM
AMERICAN BEAUTY

Sam Mendes is a director whose stage work I've always admired, and this film has an inherent theatricality about it – he brings that sensibility into the film while still creating a very interesting film in its own right. The performances are the other reason – Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening are two of my favourite actors and I think they both give amazing performances. Also, on a personal note, it's pretty inspirational to watch a theatre director take their first leap into film and achieve something like American Beauty. I would have no notion what to do if someone gave me a film camera, but you can always dream. I suppose the trick of it to surround yourself with really talented people.

BOOK
HIS DARK MATERIALS BY PHILIP PULLMAN

These three books have an imaginative scope and scale that I hadn't really come across before. They continue the tradition of people like Tolkien but take it somewhere different. The questions they raise within this fully realised fantasy world are important questions – I don't think Pullman provides answers, he just raises questions that are interesting and wraps them up in this incredible, fantastical narrative. I think his opinions are there, but I don't think he's forcing them on people, and I think anything that makes people – particularly young people – think about whether they agree with something or not, is brilliant, especially if you can wrap it all up in such a great adventure story.

MUSICAL
CABARET

I'm a huge fan of musical theatre, but for me the best and most interesting musical ever written is Cabaret. I studied musical theatre a lot at university, and Cabaret was really the moment when musical theatre grew up and started to tackle society and the world. And then, of course, the songs themselves are just fabulous anthems in the middle of it all. Again, it raises questions, it makes you think and as a piece of musical theatre it shifts the boundaries a bit. I don't think I could single out one song from it, though – they all complement each other.

• Gordon Barr is director of the Bard in the Botanics festival, at Glasgow's Botanic Gardens until 2 August. Tel: [phone] or visit www.bardinthebotanics.org