I get on with actors, and when I’m doing a theatre show, it’s great being with them all the time. But we’re all alike, and it’s much nicer being with people who are different.
A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through?
I write the occasional entry for the ‘Times’ Theatre blog, especially when I’m in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don’t tweet. I don’t want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That’s like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly.
My entertainment was going to the local dollar movie theatre on the weekend, where I watched old black and white movies. If you wanted current movies, you had to drive to the big city.
The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions – even parading without a permit!
I had tried out for theatre school and didn’t get it four times.
Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.
Theatre has been a part of my life since before I can remember – my dad is also an actor and a director and a storyteller who lives and works in the Twin Cities; my mom is a nurse practitioner, but she also grew up doing theatre – so, it has always been a part of my experience.
I find theatre easier than films, because it gives you an environment of a dark hall, the audience concentrating with you… whereas, film sets are not conducive to long rehearsals, and it is difficult to pick up the emotions amidst all that is going on around you.
I didn’t want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world.
At 9, I started taking classes at Sylvia Young Theatre School. One day, they asked if I wanted to join their agency. You get in if you’re cute, I guess.
Cornelia Parker has inspired a lot of my theatre work. Her art is about points of impact: it’s poetic but with a strong literal story.
‘Blackbird’ is the only one I’ve ever wanted to redo. It just haunted me, this play. There was a sense of unfinished business because at the time we did it at Manhattan Theatre Club, there was real momentum to move it to Broadway.
In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors.
I was very excited and interested as a background dancer or as a theatre actor or when I was working on TV, or even on the film which didn’t do well, like ‘Byomkesh.’
I feel there’s enough seriousness in the world without seeing it in the theatre.
Of all the mediums, theatre is the one where you really need to have something to say – because it’s just you, the words, and the space.
It’s important to move the theatre into the 21st Century.
Theatre’s a much less faddish, more sensible world than TV or film.
I prefer theatre but TV keeps you well known.
There wasn’t anyone in my family who was involved in the theatre. I saw a few amateur plays when I was growing up, but I can’t think of anything that happened or anybody in particular who inspired me; it all came from within.
I have a strong and strange character, and I’ve rarely met directors who knew what to do with this character. One of the few who did was my father, and in the theatre, Arthur Nauzyciel.
The real thing is, you should be seeing these plays in the Theatre. That’s what they were written for. That’s where the enjoyment is. Studying them is no enjoyment whatsoever.
I love the comradery of doing theatre that you don’t get in film.
If we don’t reach out to make theatre affordable to the young generation, we will lose them all.
The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage.
I did an internship at the Ardent theatre company in Philly after dropping out of college. I was earning $165 a week building sets and cleaning the toilets. Cleaning toilets is a good way of getting in touch with your creativity. That’s when you find out if you got anything going on in your head.
I’m a pro! No, what I mean is I have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. I have been all over the place. I have studied theatre for seven years.
It’s a real leveller, you know, to do theatre at least once every two years.
All TV can do is capture the spirit of a book because the medium is so utterly different. But I’m very grateful for the readers that Masterpiece Theatre has undoubtedly brought me.
My representation overseas can’t stand me doing theatre because it takes me out of action. But it’s what I want to do. If it means passing up other possibilities, them’s the breaks.
My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton’s story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.
Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play.
A lot of my background is in theatre, so when you’re on location, and the wind is really blowing, it’s raining, and you’ve got mud all over you, it really keeps you on your toes.
The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.
When I choose projects, I don’t stipulate between film or theatre or television. I receive scripts and I read scripts – and when I read a script that’s good, I then get married to it and talk to my agent about what happens next.
The truth of the matter is I stayed in L.A. raising my children, and when they went to college, I packed my bags along with them and came to New York and looked for parts in the theatre, because that’s always what I preferred doing.
I get bored at the theatre a lot because I notice that there’s not always a connection between the actors. They may be technically proficient, but they’re not surprising each other. I’m thrilled by actors who make choices that are surprising.
It’s a whole different kind of anxiety. But the great thing about doing a theatre job is that once the ball starts rolling you just have to go with it, it’s inexorable.
When I am shooting, I am inside the theatre, when I am in the editing room, I am inside the theatre. I always try to feel what they will feel. I see a film, not as a director, but as the audience. If I am entertained, they will be, too.
In high school, I was one of the cofounders of New Kids on the Block my freshman year in high school. But I also started studying theatre in high school my freshman year as well. So throughout high school, I was actually doing both.
When I was eight, I went to the theatre, and I remember looking at the stage afterward and pointing and saying, ‘I want to do that.’ I don’t think that’s ever changed.
‘Doctor Who’ was my first telly job, and before that I did a lot of theatre in education, children’s theatre.
There is an atmosphere about the picture theatre that speaks of entertainment and relaxation. The charming surroundings, good music, and the fact that each visitor is determined to enjoy a few hours of holiday all exert an influence on the mind.
Theatre is where my heart is. It’s where I can do my best work. And even if I do films and TV, that’s what I want to come back to.
You learn an incredible amount doing theatre, not just about to behave.
I started off in a small theatre performance company and worked my way into commercials.
We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets.
Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn’t for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.
I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student, and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre, art, music, politics and philosophy.
I have done a lot of street theatre and plays and interacted with the public through radio and television.
I did my New York debut at 21. It was ‘On the Town’ at the George Gershwin Theatre. New York is my artistic home.
I am in musical theatre, but it isn’t necessarily what I listen to in my leisure time, do you know what I mean?
My work is very popular with performers, and there are theatre people who get what I’m doing and what tradition I’m working in. I’m very grateful to them – they’re my people, who understand why I work the way I do.
As for theatre, there’s ups and downs to everything. Theatre is ephemeral. But that is part of its charm because you can always say the production was better than it was.
I grew up around the theatre. My mother is an actress. I would fall asleep on tons of theatre chairs. It’s in my blood; it’s in my spirit and my fabric of who I am.
