I was never a joiner. I tried – I had people I admired and liked and wanted to hang with, but I ended up starting a theatre company and that took me back to Chicago… I guess I wasn’t a scenester in the end. Something must have worked out right, as I’m still here – but I’m only a binge socialite.
I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.
I was prepared for the theatre, but not for the nuts and bolts.
Money’s never an issue. I can go and work for a small studio theatre somewhere if it’s a play I really care about, or do TV or a big commercial West End show.
In the theatre, the actor is given immediate feedback.
Where every moment is about truth and I think it’s a great challenge every night. That’s what really drove me to wanting to do theatre, and it’s great.
It was progressively more difficult to find work in the theatre, as well.
I’m allergic to the word ‘important’ in film and theatre. Cancer research is important.
It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.
I got the call to play Tony Manero in ‘Saturday Night Fever’ in Madrid, a role I’d always wanted, as it’s such a well-constructed show, and my background is in musical theatre. I’d been travelling back and forth between London and Spain for auditions and had been borrowing money from friends to do it.
I pretty much got into theatre to do community theatre and things, but then I went to Williamstown and found an agent. I then went to New York and did a lot of theatre there, so I started doing only theatre.
I love the stage, I love the process of acting in theatre, but unfortunately, it doesn’t pay the bills.
When you come out of the theatre and you don’t even talk about that film or remember it, then it disappoints me.
Theatre just fills me up so much.
I don’t rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.
I quite enjoy fame, especially when you go to conventions in America where they treat you like a god with stretch limos and the whole fame thing, but then when you come back to Britain, you end up changing in a toilet in a theatre off West End and that’s really good, because that is what it’s about.
As far as I’m concerned, Cate Blanchett is a goddess, but she’s really down to earth. She’s got all those Oscars, she’s made all those amazing films and she could spend her whole life doing that, but what does she also do? She gives birth to three boys and creates her own theatre in Sydney.
When I was young, my mum was part of a brilliant puppet theatre that toured all over the world.
I suppose because I do and can work in the theatre, I don’t see work as closing down as an older woman.
Theatre and opera were always the twin kingdoms that I felt I had to conquer, because they were my parents’ favorites.
I always say to my Twitter followers to come to the stage door and meet me. What I love about being in the theatre, rather than filming, is that you meet your audience.
In many ways, Bengalis and Marathis happen to be very similar. Both love theatre, literature and seafood.
My mother Reba Vidyarthi was a Kathak dancer while my father Govind Vidyarthi was a theatre personality. Later on, he worked for Sangeet Natak Akademi and documented many dying art forms of India.
Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel, including the philosophers Adi Ophir and Anat Biletzki, the sociologist Uri Ram, the professor of theatre Avraham Oz and the poet Yitzhak Laor.
Who would have thought that a story about a professor of phonetics would result in it being probably one of the great shows ever for musical theatre? It’s a seemingly odd subject.
Whenever I get a good script, I don’t care whether it’s telly or theatre or big screen – I’m not bothered.
I don’t leave London, really, and I don’t do theatre, because I want to put the kids to bed.
I’m ready for theatre. I’m ready for dramas, period stuff, films. I want to achieve everything.
I always go back to theatre. It’s probably where I’ll draw my last breath.
A lot of my friends were a lot into theatre a lot earlier than I was. A lot of my friends were kids who were in The Broadway Kids and the kids auditioning for Gavroche in ‘Les Miz.’ I was never that kid. I was weaned on Michael Jackson. Not literally, because that would have been odd.
I was always interested in the arts as a child – drawing, painting, and piano – but acting became a favourite. I was a major theatre geek in high school – if I wasn’t in the drama room at lunch rehearsing, I’d be in the art room finishing up some type of project.
I pursued a theatre career, and Hollywood came calling.
Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there’s a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.
I just absolutely needed the theatre so desperately – it was my fate; it was where I was running towards. It was the place where I found peace and survival and all kinds of things.
I should write a musical. That is probably one of the final areas that I should pay attention to, because it does kind of involve everything. It’s got theatre, it’s got young, pretty people… And it’s got money!
I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.
‘The Taming Of The Shrew’ is probably the first time I’ve worked in this country for about ten years, apart from theatre, and it’s not for want of trying. It was so fantastic to work in London – it felt really glamorous.
Having learnt my basics in theatre, I always feel film is a collaborative effort. If you do your part well and help the person in front of you in realising his or her potential, the film invariably comes out good.
I went to the University of Michigan and have a BFA in Musical Theatre.
I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
I was not one of those children hanging on Ma’s coat-tails following her round sets. I’d go to the theatre after school if she was working, but I didn’t even know what an agent was.
Neil and I are most thrilled that we were able to bring musical theatre to the enormous audience that ‘The Sound of Music’ reached.
The British theatre and establishment is so hard to penetrate, and there are so many talented people involved in it. So, to be counted among some of those actresses… It doesn’t get better than that.
A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.
Having started out in theatre, I feel an impulse to do it as much as I can.
We’re so bereft of support of theatre in this day and age.
If there’s one thing that I’ve done on purpose it’s to take whatever job, so long as it’s interesting and challenging, whether it’s theatre, radio, TV or film.
Theatre is where my passion lies – I just love it. I love watching it, and I love doing it.
I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.
When we finally become total slaves of mobile phones, then maybe theatre will die.
I’ve been doing theatre since I was 5 years old.
When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it’s impossible to make something so beautiful!
I was such a wallflower in high school. I did a lot of extracurricular theatre shows, but at school, I spent a lot of time by myself. I ate lunch by myself, and I was always okay with it. But I was definitely made fun of, and I always felt like an outsider.
I get to the theatre in plenty of time; I prepare my shoes in advance; I eat and drink the right things at the right time. The rest you have to leave to luck!
The last time I heard real screaming in the theatre was when I went to see a movie I did years ago, called ‘Wait Until Dark.’ Now, my mother was the least emotional person on the planet, but when I got killed in the movie, she stood up and screamed, ‘That’s my son!’ At Radio City Music Hall in New York!
I’d like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be.
When the audience comes out of the theatre, they should remember your role and appreciate you for it. They should not forget you.
Dance Theatre of Harlem has done a lot of good things well, a lot of good things badly, and a lot of bad things – it doesn’t matter how.
Theatre demands different muscles and different aspects of one’s personality.
Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating – the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.
