Despite the average height of the cast in comic farce See How They Run not being above 4ft 2in, star and director Warwick Davis says within a few minutes the audience will forget it’s watching the world’s first theatre company for short actors.

To level the playing field and take height out of the equation, he’s reduced the set size to create an illusion there is no scale.

“It is liberating us as performers,” he says.

The nine actors from his newly-formed Reduced Height Theatre Company will not have to stand by average height performers and they will not be dwarfed by the set.

The audience will soon feel like they are watching another play, which makes it all the more impressive, says Davis.

“Those who watched rehearsals were shocked. Even without the set being small they were so engrossed in the play that when somebody of average size walked in to the room or moved to rearrange a prop they turned and thought, ‘Why is that person so tall?’”

The key is it turns the situation on its head.

“Someone of average height is suddenly looked at as being quite different instead of us being considered as the ones who are quite different.”

Davis has been filming Get Santa with Jim Broadbent the day before we chat, a week in advance of See How They Run opening in Sussex.

He’s thrilled he’ll soon have a Christmas movie on his list of credits. Yet it’s a surprise it’s taken so long. Since scoring his first job as an extra on Star Wars as an 11-year-old – when his grandfather heard a radio commercial looking for people 4ft tall or shorter to play Ewoks in Return Of The Jedi – he’s had many varied roles.

He’s played Willow in the Ron Howard fantasy of the same name, been the evil Leprechaun, turned Professor Flitwick into a truly eccentric Harry Potter character and worked with Ricky Gervais on Extras and Life’s Too Short.

The latter mockumentary show was not only hilarious but also helped pave the way for the creation of the Reduced Height Theatre Company.

“It made people discuss the subject of people being short, people being different in the world and how they are treated.

“If we don’t discuss things enough then they become taboo, a stigma becomes attached to them.”

Much of the material for Life’s Too Short was taken from incidents in Davis’s life. Gervais and Stephen Merchant would turn Davis’s anecdotes into black humour.

His habit of using a mop handle to get things down from supermarket shelves became the actor getting caught using the mop by a security guard and being forced to buy it.

When Davis kicks up a fuss we see another layer.

“You don’t usually see a character perceived as being disabled as an angry character. Normally the media treat a disabled character sympathetically in their writing. So I felt it was refreshing. Although you liked him, he was an idiot. He has a chip on his shoulder.”

Davis’s profile is such that Monty Python asked him to present their reunion announcement press conferences last year.

“It was one of those moments when you have an out-of-body experience and think, ‘How on earth did this happen to me?’”

Eric Idle has also said he’d like to do a reduced height version of Spamalot – which fits nicely with Reduced Height Theatre Company’s aim to get more short actors on theatre stages.

He formed the company with his father-in-law after working on a documentary about the touring musical troupe the Ovitz family, which included seven dwarves, who survived the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp.

“Their story inspired me so much. Not only did they survive Auschwitz and go through some horrendous things but their performance was not about being short but being brilliant musicians and brilliant actors, writing their own scripts, making costumes and sets.

“I was inspired that they were not relying on height, which is something I’ve started to do later in my career – to think about being a performer and an actor, which will open up more opportunities.”

After 33 years, he’s realised that being offered plays such as See How They Run is something he would never see happen.

“The only way to have done it was to produce the play and cast myself in it.

“There is also the desire to give other short actors that opportunity to be challenged in the work they do – lots of people are well qualified having been to drama school and there is no outlet.”