Quotes About Theater

When I was seven, my mom took my twin sister and me to a play. I remember being fascinated about life onstage.

I was Jenny in 'Jenny and the School for Cats' when I was five years old. That was my first big break. Then I got to play the Artful Dodger in 'Oliver Twist,' and that was the most fun I've ever had.

I was 17 or 18 when 'The Twist' came along, and the rest is history. Sometimes I regret it. I would have gotten more into acting. I would have been more of a legitimate performer onstage like Liza Minnelli. But I got so caught up in the dance thing that I never got into theater.

Pinchas Perry, the director of 'The Chicago 8,' offered me the role of the judge, and he did not know that, 35 years earlier, I'd played a judge in the theater production. So life has its own little twists and turns.

Obviously, doing TV and doing theater are completely different because they're two totally different mediums. On stage, you worry about your voice and how you move physically. On TV, something like an eye twitch is what they could be looking for from you because it's so contained.

When I worked in theater, I was always writing things on Post-it Notes and sticking them on screens or desks. Twitter has given me a way of continuing to post those notes, only a lot of other people see them, too.

I had one of the best days of my life. I spent the afternoon with my two kids and my ex-wife at Serendipity. Then I came to the theater, and you know, I think I did the play the best I've ever done it.

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'

I saw the kid playing Simba on stage and I thought, 'I can do that, nothing special there,' and then two weeks later, I saw auditions in the newspaper and I asked if I could go, and I lucked out and got it.

Musicals aren't two-dimensional froth.

I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.

I did see one Tyler Perry movie in the theater. My friends and I went to see, I believe it was, 'Why Did I Get Married?'

My work in the theater began to shift more towards young audience type of work and education programs for children, arts education programs.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Until Genevieve I had tended towards the more dramatic type of role.

I attend surprisingly few shows. The type of theater that is popular today just doesn't appeal to me.

I never want to pigeonhole myself or get typecast. I'm looking forward to my career and showing all of my range as an actress, and I'm looking at other mediums, too. I'm a theater actress first. And I cannot wait to return to the stage.

I never felt that I was typecast, but I was concerned about it. I certainly made an effort to take as many parts in theater and film that resisted that. If you only learn how to act a certain kind of role, it is very difficult to grow as an actor.

What I love most about acting is being able to play different types of personalities without being considered crazy.

Coming up through the theater in America, while I have had success, I have had success in certain types of roles.

I loved working in Pittsburgh - the theater there is amazing, so many different types of theater.

My love of musical theater was certainly not typical. I mean, it was considered to be very, very abnormal, in fact!

Even when I became the typical shy adolescent, I never minded performing. I felt there was a kind of safety, a protection about being on stage, about losing myself in another character.

It wasn't until I moved to New York that I started actually leaving the house and doing things. You know, I was a typical theater nerd.