Quotes from Tim Crouch

To have a sense of contemporary ownership of Shakespeare is the most important thing to his work.

I'm excited about the idea of an act of theatre triggering a parallel creative act of writing.

In many respects, theater is still grappling with problems of reality and representation that the visual art movement realized were unimportant many years ago.

'Malvolio' is the one show of mine that will not die. I've performed it more than 200 times all over the place.

Art is a subjective thing, and it should be a subjective thing. And the difficulty of subjectivity is that it becomes hugely problematized when you start applying large sums of money to art objects. That's where it all starts to get a bit sticky.

Each of my Shakespeare pieces is different to the other, but each espouses a set of philosophies common to all my theatre work.

It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.

It's important for me, politically, to see that theater isn't just about the powerful.

In 'Malvolio,' the audience laugh at me, and I use that laughter to crack open the question as to why they are laughing.

I am particularly interested in creating a relationship between ideas of reception in conceptual art and theater.

'I, Malvolio' is a very, very funny show, a clown show, but there is Beckettian darkness in the character. Some real darkness, some right close to the edge of despair moments.

Children and teenagers don't easily relate to stories about kings and dukes, and to tell only stories about kings and dukes is to ignore the regular people.

Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.

Unease is not an emotion I get often in the theatre, and I like it.

Theatre can be so patronising. So often, it's just proselytising for the theatre.

It's quite rare for a group of people to come together for a live event that isn't loud music. A live event that enables thinking to take place, to take place collectively. It's unique to theatre. It's a quality I never want to see diminished.

I don't want real life necessarily to be seen only as a context to heighten the deepness my work.

I'm on a mission to make people aware that I'm not a solo artist. I'm sometimes challenged by the branding of Tim Crouch.

Keeping young people away from Shakespeare is like removing a link to their humanness.

A mental shutdown can happen when a young person is put in front of a Shakespeare play. My pieces are designed to release young audiences into the story and then creep up with the real Shakespeare, almost by stealth.

A child knows when they are on the receiving end of a didactic exercise, or when they are sitting in the shadow of something else.

'The Author' is a play about responsibility, how active we are as spectators and how responsible we are for what we choose to look at.

Uncertainty is a very good thing: it's the beginning of an investigation, and the investigation should never end.

I'm attracted to the underrated characters.