On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn’t make it less true.
I think there is a difference between being critical of plays and being critical of players and coaches.
At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.
I came to Mozambique in 1986, when I first became involved with Teatro Avenida – a theatre company that stages plays concerned with political and social issues.
A director recommended me for the role on ‘Soap.’ They said, ‘She plays heavy roles, murderesses and the like.’ He said, ‘On stage, she could be very very funny.’
Big-time players make big-time plays in big-time spots. That’s who I want to be.
I have always wanted to work in the theater. I’ve always felt the glamour of being backstage and that excitement, but I’ve never actually done it – not since I was in 5th grade, really. But I’ve had many plays in my films. I feel like maybe theater is a part of my movie work.
Women are often worried about how they look, and that’s not superficial. We know that our appearance has nothing to do with how smart, creative, or hardworking we are, but it plays powerfully into what society decides we are worth.
I became frustrated early on as a playwright by a kind of smug smallness in modern drama. There was a lack of what I now understand as courage in the work of others as well as in my own work, and I found I was mildly amused or interested by such plays but not deeply engaged or enlightened.
Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.
Coming out with records when you’re in a big, successful group that plays stadiums, that’s scary to come out by yourself.
I celebrate my teammates’ plays more than I celebrate my plays.
Ultimately, mentorship plays such a big role in breaking directors that successful male directors tend to reach the helping hand to guys who remind them of themselves. We need more women directors so they can reach out to girls who remind them of themselves.
Great quarterbacks, good quarterbacks, make plays.
My daughter plays keyboard very well, and my son plays guitar, and they’re totally into music.
There was plays where I had to do certain things, but I wouldn’t even know who caught the ball because I was so focused on getting my job done.
I was attending the University of Alberta. I was going to be a high school teacher, like my parents. I failed – no, I didn’t fail a class, I just barely passed. I really didn’t try. It was Canadian history, through the plays of the time. My God, those were boring plays.
You know, most good playwrights write seven good plays and then something happens and after that they’re crap.
The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.
I was always the smallest role in community theater and school plays. I always had two lines – I was the kid that came on stage and said one thing and then left, and that was my part for the play.
The power and appeal of Documentary is the way it alters and plays with the way the viewer relates to and understands the subject.
The aftermath of the war is what inspired us to write many of our plays. The whole reason for our writing Inherit the Wind was that we were appalled at the blacklisting. We were appalled at thought control.
I think if a person plays ‘Quantum Conundrum’ and they walk away feeling really intelligent and skilled, that’s what I want. That’s my only goal.
Of course I feel like any player that plays this game should want to reach the highest level and the highest accolades, which includes the All-Star Game. So, yeah, I would be dumb not to want to be an All-Star.
In taking stock of ourselves, we should not forget that fear plays a large part in the drama of failure. That is the first thing to be dropped. Fear is a mental deficiency susceptible of correction, if taken in hand before it gains an ascendency over us. Fear comes with the thought of failure.
I acted at school but got very bad parts – things that they’d made up in Shakespeare plays like ‘Guard 17’ – so I wrote plays and gave myself parts, then I wrote sketches, then I did stand-up. Even in the school nativity I was the emu in the manger.
Baseball, boxing, handball – sooner or later every game gets compared to narrative, but only in football are the plays perfectly linear, drawn up with letters, and only in football is the field itself lined like a sheet of notebook paper.
One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.
It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven’t done.
I was always in plays at school and in school concerts – you could say I liked to show off.
When I was first exposed to the films of Ingmar Bergman, I found them frank and disturbing portraits of the world we live in, but that was not something that displeased me. They were beautiful. I thought people would respond to my plays the way I responded to Bergman’s films.
I got Jimmy Hall from Wet Willie and he also plays now with Hank Williams Jr.
One does not play the piano with one’s fingers: one plays the piano with one’s mind.
The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while ‘Foster the People’ plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.
Going to rehearsals of school plays got me out of science. It became clear what inspired me and what dampened my spirit. The only other thing I could do at school was trampolining – it didn’t seem to have much future in it.
Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.
I was very lucky. I left college, and Richard Eyre was in charge of the National Theatre. I was offered the lead in ‘The Seagull’ with no experience and went on to do five plays there.
Not every kid plays football, basketball. Running can be a source to vent and let things out.
I’ve redone plays of mine and made changes. A play is a living thing, and I’d never say I wouldn’t rewrite years later. Tennessee Williams did that all the time, and it’s distressing, because I’d like the play to be out there in its finished form.
A global deal will only be possible if Britain plays its part, leading the way with other developed countries.
By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10.
Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn’t sit half way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little.
It never occurred to me that I was a leading man until I was 19 years old. I had been acting since I was 10, so that’s nine years and 30 or 40 plays, in school and summer stock, professional theater, too.
The lead actor, along with the director, plays a big role in what the vibe will be on set, and that’s a huge responsibility.
I didn’t do plays at school, because I didn’t have the confidence. At 14, I was at boarding school in Devon and I suffered from dyslexia quite badly, but they had a very good department there which specialised in it.
Ever since I was 7 years old, I was writing. I remember being in the basement of my house, this dank, horrible basement, putting on plays with not-very-willing participants, and I would promise kids in the neighborhood that I’d play Nintendo 64 with them after we’d rehearse this stupid play that I wrote.
I’m just a normal young lad who plays football.
So many plays with magic in them that would be a terrific invitation to an imaginative animation team.
I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he’s writing about. I think, you just can’t move them about, you know.
The greatest luxury is being able to go to movies and plays now and then in the afternoons.
Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.
Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
I did plays in college, and I have half of a play. But I’m kind of stuck. I keep revisiting it so maybe it will move somewhere. There’s something about plays where you can feel that sense of artifice at any moment.
It’s a part of my game, something I’ve done since I was a little kid. Whenever I have an opportunity to do it, I feel comfortable outside the pocket. Big plays happen that way.
