Quotes About Theater

Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.

When you're writing for a show, you're writing part of the script. You have to tell the story.

I've never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you.

I'm good with a script.

You start out with scripts pre-written, with no specific actor in mind, so you've got to build a character on top of that foundation. It's not just lifting words off the page, it's constructing a history around them as well.

In theater, we know a scheduled season months in advance.

Dramatics are what keep you in the seats.

I did Second City, and Nia Vardalos also did Second City, so I knew her from there.

I came up through Second City, so I'm used to playing 20 characters every night who are very different from each other. I wouldn't want my career to be any different.

Theater dressing rooms are my home away from home - my second home, really.

That theater community that comes with acting and being in the theater is second nature to me. It's in my blood.

I can overact in two seconds.

When I was a kid growing up, you maybe secretly wanted to be an actor, but you never said.

Whether they know it or not, most American playgoers owe an incalculably great debt to translators. Were it not for their work, comparatively few of us would be able to enjoy the plays of Chekhov, Ibsen or Moliere.

One time, I had to do Edgar in 'King Lear' and Owl in 'Winnie the Pooh' on the same day.

It's called show business for a reason. The theater owners want to make money, and understandably so.

I'd had the theater background for so long that I know that world inside out; I just didn't know the pace of how a TV set works, like how a show shoots.

You do a straight play for three months, four months, maybe. It's so brief. And then you're on to the next thing. I loved that. I love that rhythm and that pace.

I was a huge theater nerd when I was younger, so I was in a bunch of school musicals - Working,' South Pacific,' Fiddler on the Roof,' a very weird little operetta called Charlotte Sweet,' Nine,' The Wiz.'

'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Manon,' 'Giselle' - they are not stupid stories. They have fantastic characters. They have a big package of emotion.

After 30 years in the theater, I'm used to having a great amount of control over what I do. But with '24', you place your character's life in the writers' hands, and you have no idea what's going to happen until you're sent the next pages.

If a scene is three pages long, quite often people break it up and do a page, say 'cut' then move on to the next bit, they do it in cuts. I don't really like doing that; I like to go through it all in one organic run, then give notes afterward. A little bit more like theater.

'Nicholas Nickleby' is 800 pages long. At one time, the theater production was 15 hours long. So it's an interesting process, about what you leave out and what you select.

Everyone who appears in a scene gets paid.