I always liked the visuals to be choice and at the same time minimalist. And, I love black boxes. After all, that’s what theatre is, it’s an empty space, and it’s both limited and unlimited because the space is the space, but what you can do with people’s imaginations is really endless.
When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.
It’s communication – that’s what theatre is all about.
There is a sense of purity in theatre which always attracts me. Deep down, I feel I am more of an artist than a commodity, which Bollywood turns you into. I want to strike a balance.
Coming back to theatre is something I’m keen to do for the rest of my life. It recharges my batteries, so to speak.
Theatre people, who are an adaptive species, know that to remain sane in the process of production where everyone and his uncle has an opinion about how to fix a show, you must pick the people whose knowledge and taste you trust and stick only to these few. The Tweetocracy is no place to look.
I’ve been an actor for 14 years now and a lot of that time was spent in theatre and television. Then I moved to L.A. to try and build upon that and it’s starting to pay off!
I loved living and breathing theatre so much that I decided I had to find a way to bring my desire to act and my ability to support myself together. I’d run through the possibilities in Washington, so that meant moving to New York.
Theatre is liberating because it only works if it’s truthful – that’s what it requires. That’s not true of film: the camera does lie.
When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called ‘In The Abyss Of Coney Island.’ That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
My parents met in the theatre, and I thought that was so romantic. My dad was a scenic designer and my mom was a dancer, and that’s how they met; they met in the theatre.
More often than not, theatre critics bubble with enthusiasm about plays that are, when all is said and done, really pretty average.
I have such a passion for theatre.
My biggest ambition when I was younger was to appear on stage at what was then Nimrod, which is the theatre where my father used to take me on Sunday afternoons to see matinees. The most extraordinary things used to occur on that stage.
I studied at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano; I was a theatre actor.
Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there’s a theatre element, a dramatic element. It’s right up my alley.
In theatre, you rehearse for months and then perform. That way, you’re totally in-sync with your character, the other characters, and the story.
I’ve never chased fame. I came into this business to be a theatre actress. I was nine when I first appeared on stage. But I can’t say I would turn my back on fortune. I’m someone who enjoys the benefits of money.
Theatre was always my passion.
The musical has always been in jeopardy – until – or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.
A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.
Plays were really my last option. The reason I didn’t write plays initially was because I thought theatre was the worst of all the art forms.
The theatre is supremely fitted to say: ‘Behold! These things are.’ Yet most dramatists employ it to say: ‘This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.’
During my stint in IT, I worked and used the free time to browse the net for research on cinema. In the evenings, I did theatre. Had I not been successful, I would have gone back to my IT job. It was my back up plan.
There were wonderful moments when I was singing for the first time in the Olympia Theatre and I was pregnant with my son, which was very, very strange for a singer.
Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It’s harder.
I never had any acting heroes. I never really went to the theatre.
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.
As a child I was taken to the pantomime or the theatre and I would always, always fall in love with somebody on the stage. And want to have sex with them.
If I go to a movie and it’s particularly violent, and people are leaving the theatre ready to vomit, we’re sitting there with our popcorn just chuckling.
Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and ’90s to make sure the school bills were paid.
When I first did theatre, I was always doing comedies; it was always my first love. But it wasn’t what I was picked for at first, for films and TV.
My first interest was always music, and somehow that channelled itself into films and acting. I don’t know what the natural transition of it was. I mean I acted a little bit when I was young and like any kid would in a community theatre.
Starting my career in London was no accident because the city and the industry here are all about theatre and drama, and I respond well to that.
I feel like the rap metal at the end of the 1990s destroyed rock music for everybody and suddenly everybody felt like they had to apologise for being in rock bands. People suddenly felt bad about wanting to reach massive audiences and the sense of theatre, that we have in our live show, became something to avoid.
Many of the Universities have very good Theatre Departments these days.
I think the most important thing that comes out of the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in early 1942 is a commitment on Roosevelt’s part to fight Europe first. To struggle first against Germany and put Japan and the Pacific as a secondary theatre in the conflict. And this is what Churchill was after.
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room.
When it is good, theatre takes a lot of beating both to watch and perform.
I do still like television very much, but the theatre does really have something special about it.
Theatre owners cannot threaten actors with defamation cases and take them to court or seek compensation for losses incurred.
On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre.
There is always a sacred hour in the theatre – after rehearsals and before performances, in the afternoon, between three and five o’clock. Normally the theatre is empty then, and this is a wonderful hour.
Now I’m seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It’s gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I’m scared I might be a celebrity.
I don’t really know Hollywood, but living and shooting in L.A. was very motivating, inspiring. The lights, the extras, their American faces, the energy, the Orpheum Theatre. It was all very inspiring.
I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.
I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.
Every baseball crowd, like every theatre audience, has its own distinctive attitude and atmosphere.
I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first, I wanted to work in the theatre, but there was something about the ambience of film, especially American films, that always attracted me.
I think film and television are really a director’s medium, whereas theatre is the actor’s medium.
I prefer theatre to television – you get to feel the love.
That’s the thing – you do a job like ‘Shameless,’ and suddenly that’s why you can get a job like ‘The Virgin Queen’, not because of all the classical theatre you’ve done. But we can be very snippy about television. It’s absolutely the most potent and powerful form of storytelling we have.
I would like to do theatre because it scares me, and I think you should do things that scare you.
It’s all good fun – television and movies and so on – but the good thing in theatre is there’s nothing and no one between you and the audience so you can do what you want really.
In many ways, theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall – that when the play is finished, it’s done – but now I realise it’s more like gardening; you plant the thing, then you have to constantly tend it. You’re part of a thing that’s living.
From a very young age, I wanted to get up on stage whenever I went to the theatre – the actors just seemed to be having so much fun. One of my worries about theatre, in fact, is that the actors are quite often having more fun than the audience.
