HE was born in Belfast, but Michael Boyd, the lauded – and now departing – artistic director of one of the definitive crown jewels of British culture, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) declares proudly: "There isn't a non-Scottish molecule in me."

Boyd, the director perhaps best known in Scotland for being leader of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow for nearly ten years until 1996, will feel those molecules tingle again this week. He is in Glasgow again, delivering, on Thursday, a major lecture at the Royal Concert Hall for the ongoing series of Glasgow Lectures on Culture.

Entitled Theatre in 2064 – A Future Search, it will question the future of not only theatre, but the nature of public forums of discussion and debate, and also what theatre itself will mean in 2064, 500 years after Shakespeare's birth – and possibly 50 years after the re-establishment of an independent Scotland.

We explore his lecture later, but on the bitingly cold but sunny day in London when we meet, Boyd has many other things to discuss, too. It is clear that Scotland, despite his decade in England at the helm of the RSC, still means much to him. The independence question has been exercising his powerful mind – and what it will mean for theatre, as well as what it will means for the nation. He remains deeply plugged into Scotland, and impressed by the work of the National Theatre of Scotland, even though, he later admits, he was actually against the idea of an NTS for many years.

Boyd, 56, joined the RSC in 1996 as an associate director, and was appointed to his current role in 2002. Amongst other achievements, he has overseen the £112m renovation project to the Stratford-upon-Avon theatres, the RSC's 50th birthday and the planning of this year's World Shakespeare Festival.

Will he, I ask, work north of the Border again, once his 10 years at the helm of the RSC come to a close at the end of this year?

"I would very much, very much hope to do work in Scotland, absolutely," he says enthusiastically. "I would love to, and it would be really, really depressing if I didn't." He continues: "I was born in Belfast, but my mother is a second-generation immigrant from Scotland. My dad, with a name like Boyd, almost certainly came over from Kilmarnock. So there isn't a non-Scottish molecule in me.

"But I came from Belfast when I was tiny, I was brought up in London, and then I moved to Edinburgh when I was 16 [to study English Literature], and spent a very long time there, and then moved to Russia, to England and spent quite a long time in Glasgow. I am a 'Brit'.

"So there is a bit of me that will cry if Scottish independence happens, because it will be a bit like me being pulled apart. But then," he adds, "in the end, I am a visitor in England. I don't really necessarily fit in in Belfast, and I don't really fit in in Scotland. I don't necessarily fit in in England either. As an artist, it is quite useful [to have that distance], although I am jealous sometimes of people who know who their tribe is, utterly."

Boyd, a friendly, if studious presence in his surprisingly modest offices, lives in London, and cannot see himself moving in the near future, even after leaving the RSC – his youngest daughter Rachel has just started secondary school. His twins by his first marriage, Gabriella and Daniel, have recently graduated from the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, respectively. He is a very proud father – "they are both severely testing my puritanical distrust of success – they are doing disgustingly well". Charles Saatchi has championed Gabriella's award–winning art and Daniel recently filmed a pilot for Sky Atlantic and will star as Romeo in Headlong Theatre's version of the Shakespeare tragedy. Both were born in Glasgow, but, their father says, "they don't have Scottish accents. There was that awful, horrible moment – probably two and half years into London life when it just went away, it's really sad.

"I have them on tape when they were wee, and they are now gobsmacked to hear their really broad Glasgow accents when they were children."

Perhaps, I suggest, post-RSC, you could direct plays – an activity which remains his first love – for the NTS. He says he would love to, if asked. He is a firm admirer of Scottish writer David Greig, who he simply says is one of the best writers in the UK, "end of story".

He admits he was "in opposition for years" to the idea of a national theatre in Scotland. "For fear," he says, "of the burden of cultural expectation on those people running that theatre company, that the level of expectation to express Scottishness, could, I was afraid, prove a burden that was destructive. And I think Vicky Featherstone [artistic director of the NTS] and Neil Murray [executive producer] have subverted that brilliantly, but the pressure has been there, and they have been questioned. I am alarmed at them being questioned in public about not being Scottish enough."

Boyd's personal politics involved voting SNP in the past, he says. "I did vote SNP often, to kick the Labour party up the a***," he says. "I didn't believe in the 1970s, when I was a student at Edinburgh University, in the sincerity of the Labour Party about devolution, and there were good reasons not to believe their sincerity."

One of his "most depressing memories", he says, was when he was working in Moscow as a trainee director at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre in 1979. "I remember being congratulated by a corrupt senior official of the Writer's Union on the election of Margaret Thatcher. They were great admirers of Margaret Thatcher. Both being congratulated on her victory, and the fact that [the Russians] were oblivious to a devastating blow for me – the failure of the referendum on devolution."

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to his lecture, which will look not only at the past, but the far future. In 2064, everything could be different. He says: "What are the most fundamental, most irreducible things about theatre? That will survive competition with other media, more pressure on public funding in the near future at least, the pressure on live arts performers to distribute their work more widely digitally? Is the term 'digital theatre' an oxymoron? Theatre is much harder to bottle than we think it is."

Is there room, he asks, for the live theatrical experience, in an age where home entertainment, even hand-held entertainment, is becoming the dominant form of everyday cultural activity. "I do think it is vital," he says. "Theatre more than any other art form works through the full human presence – in real time, in a shared space, with the audience breathing the same air, growing older together-at its best, as an art form is that it refuses to divorce, in the way that the education system so often does, the head from the heart and the body."

The choice of 2064 as the focal point in the speech is for several reasons. "Part of it," he says, "is a semi-comic recognition of what many people might perceive as the vulnerability of theatre. So there is an element of 'will you still need me, will you still feed me' in 2064. It's also the 500th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, so where will he be? It will also be the 50th anniversary of a very, very significant referendum in Scotland."

He notes that the theatre world in the newly-independent Ireland "turned their back" on Shakespeare for some time. Could that happen in Scotland, post-independence (if it happens)? "I think it's terribly understandable of both the Scots and the Irish to completely turn their back on Shakespeare given his pathetic attempts to portray Scottishness and Irishness in his plays," he says, smiling.

"It's almost worse than the French, because at least the French get a lot of air time, and flounce around in costume while behaving badly."

Ignoring Shakespeare in Ireland led to a "drastic impoverishment of Irish theatre, which it is now waking up to", he notes.

He adds: "So if Scotland does go into a 'Whaur's yer Willie Shakespeare noo?' phase, I don't think it will last forever. For either Ireland or Scotland to chop off their nose to spite their Anglo-dominated face, it is self-defeating."

After 10 years at the helm of such an integral part of the cultural scene of the UK, is Boyd rather glad to be rid of the heavy shade of William Shakespeare?

"No," he says, "I have found him a very benign fellow traveller." Perhaps, I suggest, he could be a dinner guest for his perfect meal, for our Life and Loves panel? Or maybe not. "He was probably a complete pain in the a***," he says. "How do we know what he was like actually? In his work he is obviously a fascinating person to encounter and a lovely person to encounter – but whether he would be in person? I don't know."

Michael Boyd Artistic director, RSC

LIFE AND LOVES

Career High?

The last night of the last complete RSC Histories cycle at the Roundhouse in 2008.

Career Low?

"This production crawls like a tired earwig from one mound of tedium to another". Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1981. Review of his production of George Etherege's She Would If She Could.

Favourite Holiday Destination? This year we are going to Ile de Re, France.

Favourite meal?

Caroline, my wife, cooks cod with cumin seed and rice. Also: plum cake.

Favourite Film?

Ratatouille (2007), pictured. Absolute genius, a beautiful film.

Last book read?

Look at Me by Jennifer Egan.

Best personality trait?

Mostly open hearted and open minded.

Worst personality trait? Sometimes I am pointlessly judgmental.

Perfect dinner party guest? Getting the whole family together is quite an achievement and always a joy.