In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can’t stand it.
I come out of repertory theatre so I’ve been working under pressure my whole career.
I think some of my best theatre training has been in the Marine Corps. Not only meeting a bunch of characters, but growing up. You’re in really adult situations at a young age, as far as being in charge of people.
When I was at drama school, I remember going to Amsterdam for new year and sitting with friends on the front of a P&O ferry in the wind, having some sort of ‘Titanic’ moment, declaring ourselves to be the new kings of theatre.
I’m a theatre person, that’s who I am. I’m happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I’m basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.
There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn’t have anybody to look down on.
I don’t really have a theatre background at all.
Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts.
I love live theatre, it’s always thrilling and exciting.
When I’m doing theatre, I feel like my life’s on hold. Even though you might go out for a coffee, or go and see a film, your brain is still there, pulling you back to it.
I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don’t go.
I came from the Groundlings Theatre in L.A., and there, you’re guaranteed to at least try something out in front of an audience. At ‘SNL,’ only the best stuff gets picked, and it’s taught me a very defined language of comedy. You learn the structure of a joke, which is not something I was very good at beforehand.
When I play, I feel like I’m in a theatre, why should I look ugly then, because I’m a tennis-player?
When I started drama school, theatre was the main draw. I never had any movie star notions. Not that there were family ties to the theatre, either.
I was introduced to the world of films by Manoj Bajpayee and trained under theatre actor Makrand Deshpande.
Theatre is really difficult, so it’s important that you have a director that kind of understands that and is really hands on.
I have mainly come from a theatre background, I did ‘Oliver’ here I played the Artful Dodger and I did ‘The Sound of Music.’
My parents lived, breathed, ate and slept theatre. Emotions were right on the surface. Growing up, the unreal had as much importance as the real.
I’m really keen to go back and do some theatre, but I can’t afford to at the moment because we’re getting married in September. And then I’m hoping to direct a film at the end of this year, and that means a year of your life without pay.
A theatre is the most important sort of house in the world because that’s where people are shown what they could be if they wanted and what they’d like to be if they dared to and what they really are.
I love directing. It’s something I started doing in theatre when I was in university in Chicago and I started a theatre company right out of college and was directing for many years.
My company is called East-West Theatre precisely because Sarajevo is this city on the border between East and West, the place where the Great Mosque and the Catholic Cathedral and the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral stand almost within touching distance of each other.
Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience.
My mother was working on her college degree throughout my childhood, and being the youngest in the family, that meant being dragged to a lot of her classes. She majored in playwriting, so I was exposed to theatre from a very young age, and it was just the most magical world to me.
I grew up in the theatre. It’s where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.
I tell my children to avoid theatre and go into cinema and TV.
Theatre is an actor’s medium. An actor has little control over a film. Which is why most actors who have done theatre, and then come to films find the former more creatively satisfying.
Every time I listened to Lux Radio Theatre, I wanted to vomit.
I really believe at the end of the day, regardless of how noble you are or how patriotic the film might be, it has to serve as entertainment in order for your audiences to come into the theatre and watch it. Otherwise, audiences will wait and see it a few months later when it is premiered on television.
When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you’re given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction.
In contrast, the control you have in a theatre is very attractive to me.
My parents wanted me to be a doctor, and they weren’t very happy at the idea of me choosing acting as a career. Everyone in my family went to university – my older brother is a lawyer – but when they saw me for the first time at the theatre, they thought, ‘OK.’ They like it very much now.
In 1973, ‘Sizwe Banzi is Dead’ and ‘The Island,’ which I co-wrote with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona, transferred from The Royal Court Theatre to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End.
There are a lot of pros to doing a film, as far as it helping your film career, and it is completely different financially. But theatre is the only place where you get to actually be the character, and nobody is going to come around and change it later.
You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait… It felt weird to me. But it’s interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people there.
The Majestic Theatre in San Antone is as good as it gets.
My playground was the theatre. I’d sit and watch my mother pretend for a living. As a young girl, that’s pretty seductive.
Musical theatre is something I’m familiar with, I’ve been doing that.
During dad’s time, we didn’t have many sabhas to nurture plays. Later soaps threatened to subdue theatre.
When I was ten, I saw ‘Grease’ on stage and thought: ‘I want to be part of that; it looks like so much fun.’ My mum enrolled me in a local theatre group, and it all went from there.
I love all the arts – so museums, theatre, music, walks near trees or by the ocean, time with people, psychological readings.
When I tried to do ‘Waiting for Godot, it was such a controversy. I was tired of political theatre. All I wanted to do was ‘Godot.’ You know what happened? We were told we had messed up and politicised a classic that has nothing to do with S.A.
I love film, but it’s funny going to drama school for three years, where you spend most of your time training for theatre, then coming out and just doing films.
I say over and over again that I am just standing on the shoulders of so many who have set this path for me, and they may not be seen or recognized or have been given an opportunity to have a voice, but I’m here representing all of those dancers. Dance Theatre of Harlem Virginia Johnson, Tai Jimenez, Lauren Anderson.
I did a little theatre work after that and the following year I got another part in a television series. Then it was almost to the end of the year before I got more work. That was coming to terms with the reality of the vocation I had chosen.
I arrive at the theatre four hours before the beginning of the performance. I must get accustomed to the hall even if I know it well.
As a kid, the theatre always felt a bit like running away to join the circus.
I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I’ve given up any hope of being considered a director.
You do T.V. and movies to make the money, and then you do theatre for the love of it.
I used to go with my parents and loved it, I was in school plays, and I started reading plays before I started reading novels. I’ll defend it to the hilt. When theatre is good it is fabulous.
In theatre, there’s the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it’s the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me.
I’m probably only going to make 10 movies, so I’m already planning on what I’m going to do after that. That’s why I’m counting them. I have two more left. I want to stop at a certain point. What I want to do, basically, is I want to write novels, and I want to write theatre, and I want to direct theatre.
I was a musical theatre geek in high school and college.
I started using film as part of live theatre performance – what used to be called performance art – and I became intrigued by film.
STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow’s rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future.
I approach video games the same way I approach theatre, filmmaking, poetry, or painting. I wish more people would take that point of view. It would help the industry to move on.
