Winning a prestigious award can be a two-edged sword, first there's the joy before the fear of having to live up to all that is now expected of you kicks in.

For Caroline Steinbeis that is certainly the case after her plans for putting on Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest helped her join a list of top names to have won the JMK award, the UK's most coveted accolade for young directors.

"It's quite intimidating because there's a group of people that have previously won it and gone on to do great things," says the 29-year-old.

"I didn't believe I had won at first, one of the actors congratulated me on Facebook first before the judges and I refused to accept it.

"They left me hanging for a while but I was surprised when they told me.

"It's lovely to win but I was very happy with what we submitted and I was very pleased they recognised that we had taken it very seriously."

Mad Forest was written by Caryl Churchill in 1989 after she and a group of acting students travelled to Romania just three months after the Communist revolution that overthrew dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

They spent time living and working with Romanian students in order to write the play based on the ordinary person's experience of the revolution.

"It's a fast play that everyone takes something away from," says Steinbeis.

"If you saw it more than once you would have a very different experience second time around because you will pick up on more things.

"It's a play set in the back drop of the revolution that looks at human relations and how people cope with the different conditions.

"I don't think she would describe it as a documentary but it does give you an insight into people in the revolution and the state the nation was in.

"It's probably one of the earliest attempts to make sense of what happened and there are still a lot of unanswered questions."

Mad Forest, Battersea Art Centre, Lavender Hill, July 17 to August 8, 7.30pm, £12. Call 020 7223 2223 or visit bac.org.uk.