Andrina Carroll had done a "pants-only" rehearsal the day before and was preparing to go the Full Monty the following day. The York-based actress was considering just how embarrassing it would be stripping off in front of her fellow actors.

It isn't the nudity required by David Hare's play The Blue Room that worries her - although she's still trying to dissuade her mother from seeing the production - but the circumstances of removing her clothes. And she's decided that the rehearsal room would be far more embarrassing than actually being full frontal on the stage of York Theatre Royal. "For me, it's not the nudity, although I haven't done it before," she says. "I think on stage it'll be fine. You'll be miles away from anyone in the audience. The embarrassing stuff is doing it in rehearsals, especially with someone you don't know when you do half a scene together naked in bed."

Talk of nudity is inevitable as Hare's play, a series of sexual encounters based on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, achieved notoriety in London's West End as the leading lady was Hollywood star Nicole Kidman. That production featured just two actors, while the York production has four which means the nudity is spread around a bit more. This is Carroll's second role in the autumn rep season. She's also playing Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. This involves lying half-submerged in a pool of water at every performance. "Warm water is piped into the pool just before the show. The problem is when you get out, it's cold," she says.

"We were all very dubious of the pool idea during rehearsals when we used a very large paddling pool from the Early Learning Centre. We tried out various costumes and realised they were totally transparent when we got wet, so we couldn't use them."

Born in Alnwick, Carroll left the North-East when she was five and her family moved to London, although she returned regularly for holidays with her grandparents. She first worked at the Theatre Royal in Jane Eyre in 1992 when, she says: "I fell in love with York and thought I would love to live there."

Before that, people in the business had always said it was necessary for actors to live in London near the agents, directors and auditions. But she and partner Andrew Dunn, also an actor whose credits include Victoria Wood's Dinnerladies and playing spin doctor Alastair Campbell in Rory Bremner's satirical shows, decided to make the move. His family already lived in the city.

In recent years, she has worked mainly in the North so as not to be separated too much from son Elliot, now six. Her last appearance at the Theatre Royal was an odd one - on the poster for a production of Closer. "Because I have a child of school age, it's hard to do theatre. I've tended to work within very close travelling distance so I can get home every day," she explains. "The practicality of it seems to be, stay in the North. It does get a bit tricky."

Matters have been complicated by Dunn being away recording BBC1's hospital drama Holby City at Elstree, near London. As well as appearing in two plays at the Theatre Royal, she's also taking part in daytime schools workshops on The Dream and in a new Saturday morning storytelling project - "which entails us having to learn very long stories off by heart".

* A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Blue Room continue in repertoire, with Les Liaisons Dangereuses, at York Theatre Royal until November 17. Tickets (01904) 623568