Quotes About Theater

The first play I was ever in was 'Cinderella,' a children's production in Los Angeles when I was only 8. It was strictly a children's show which played weekends for about a year and which included such songs as 'Long Ago and Far Away' and 'True Love.'

Very often my weekends are spent performing on Saturday, on stage in the afternoon and again in the evening.

Sure, theater is tough because you're not home at night a lot and you work on weekends - every job has its downside. But to do something that you love doing for two hours a night, that's a pretty sweet gig.

I ended up at Tufts because I fell in love with its unique theater program and because I wanted to go to a liberal arts school where I could study a variety of subjects. Also, my parents were less than an hour away, so I could bring home laundry on the weekends.

I'm obsessed with 'Hamilton.' I've seen it, like, three times, and if I could get a weekly pass, I would.

I had a sympathetic role in 'thirtysomething,' and in two weeks I'm going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It's much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.

I went into this job to do plays, but that's here for 10 weeks, and the rest of the year I do a lot of other things-the administrative work of planning, reading plays.

When I was 13 years old, a professional theater company in my town needed a kid actor. I auditioned, and I got the part, so for just a few weeks I became a member of the company and I met some professional actors.

With stage, it's very tough. You have to have a lot of stamina - you're doing eight shows a week for 19 weeks. The same thing, every night. Twice a day some days. The only full day I actually had off was Sunday. And every night is different.

I'm not a musical theatre person, and I never will be, especially after seeing the way it operates. It's so incredibly inefficient. It takes three weeks to effect a change. It can be a lighting change, a script change, a musical change - you have to meet with six different departments, and about a month later, it may happen.

I came out of repertory theater, where I worked 50 weeks a year, and I loved working with the people.

We did a different show every night. We'd open a show, and then two weeks later we'd open the next show. And two weeks later we'd open the third show until we had all eight running. And it was just one of the richest experiences I'd ever had in my theatrical life.

Playing in front of an audience was just such a turn-on for me, and you have 200 people in the audience and it's like doing live theater. And filming something that goes to millions of people several weeks later, it's an interesting dynamic.

When you're doing a play that's fully produced, you have the benefit of rehearsing for four or five weeks, so you really get to live in the skin of the character for much longer than when you first start doing a character on TV.

What I always loved about theater is that that's an experience that a company of actors just sinks itself into for weeks, and you really get to work on the material, and by the time you're in front of an audience, you really own it.

Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy.

My very first acting job ever, the first time I got paid to be an actress, was in 2001, right between my sophomore and junior year in college, when I was just 19 years old. I got paid $250 every two weeks, 10 shows a week, to be in the Utah Shakespearean Festival. I was Calpurnia in 'Julius Caesar.'

Occasionally, I have time to go to the theater, and I think for a minute, 'Man, I'd really love to be doing a play right now.' Because I loved doing plays when I was doing them. Then I think, 'I want to do it right now, but will I want to do that Sunday matinee in six weeks?'

Plays are a pretty big commitment. It takes a minimum of three months out of your life, really. And if you have family or kids, then at least during the rehearsal period for five or six weeks, you kind of say goodbye to everybody.

The magic of landing my first role on Broadway went 'poof' in a matter of a few weeks.

In theater, you get to rehearse several weeks, you memorize everything, and by the time you open, you know what the play is. In film, it's almost the opposite. You do your work on your own and maybe have a couple of minutes to rehearse. When the camera rolls, you generally don't know what's going to happen.

'Clybourne Park' was my first job after the birth of my son, who was 11 weeks old when we started rehearsals. And while that was truly harder than anything I've ever done, I was grateful every day to be going to work on such an incredible play, with such a generous, intelligent, supportive group of people.

I did nine months in 'Mrs. Klein' in New York, then four months on the road. Then I did a movie directed by Philip Haas, who did 'Angels & Insects'. We shot 'The Blood Oranges' in Mexico for six weeks.

I'm someone who started in the theater and really couldn't stand repeating the show. My favorite part of acting is the five or six weeks of rehearsal that you get. I like doing previews; I like the opening week because my friends and family come, and then after that, I don't want to do it anymore.