Quotes About Theater

There's something about getting onstage in a play where the actor tells the story, beginning, middle, and end, the way they want to tell it. For me, it's the most powerful place to be, and it's the most empowering place to be.

It fascinated me, these kids who would sit in their living room or bedroom or kitchen and sing to the camera and act out the song fully as though they were onstage. Because a lot of musical theater kids... do that alone in your bedroom when you're a kid. But for someone to go and put that online? That's just so embarrassing!

That's part of what made me interested in theater as a kid. It made it acceptable to be a man for an hour onstage.

Working with film directors helps me grow, but nothing like the incremental jumps I make onstage.

I took a break from theater after 'The Cripple of Inishmaan' to make some money, to be honest, and also to feel more confident in front of a camera, and before long it was two years since I'd been acting onstage and I found that I really missed it.

I always loved the sheer physical act of being onstage.

We were always in church, and always singing, so once I realized that music was something that I had a knack for, I sort of latched onto it, and it helped give me an identity and figure out who I was as a person. It informed my way into theater, which informed my way into television.

I was a stage-struck child from about 5 years onward.

I feel the dams of emotions open up more easily when one is acting.

There's a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.

I think people in theater are pretty open-minded and objective about the talent and what they can bring to the story they want to tell.

When 'night, Mother' opened, I did not know how long it would be before I would have another show on Broadway.

I don't think I have had a big break, although joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 opened up new horizons.

Chorus Line' opened things up a bit. Any show that's successful does that. But 'Chorus Line' was about dancers.

If you are opening a play, a play that's really about something, a play that's really about ideas, you have to find a way to sell that play.

My junior year, I was in a play at school and five days before opening night, I still didn't know my lines. Opening night was a disaster. I was so embarrassed. The director made me work backstage for the rest of the performance.

'A Chorus Line' never dies; it just keeps opening doors and giving back to me - but there was a time when I considered it an albatross around my neck.

If some people think it shows a feminine side to be in the theater, I've never felt that. And I'll openly say that an intelligent person who is a sensitive person will be and should be in touch with their inner female.

Theater will cast in a more open way; Denzel Washington might play Richard III. Television and film don't really cast openly like that. The theater world has always been a leader in diversity.

I became a set designer for opera.

I've never been to the opera; I've only seen opera on DVD.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it.

I graduated from high school early so I could move to New York to do 'A Little Night Music' out of the New York City Opera.