Quotes About Theater

The god of theater laughs in your face at planning. You can't plan as an actor; there's no way, because so much of it is dependent on other people's choices and decisions that you're at the whim of fate, really.

I come from theater, and doing period stuff is so whimsical and imaginative and so outside any frame of reference than I have ever had so I prefer that just in terms of fun factor.

I believe in not whistling backstage and not saying the name of the Scottish play.

In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.

Sometimes I feel that my job on earth is to put Julie White through horrible things, watch her writhe and then recover.

'Hamilton' just asks us all to go a little bit deeper: whether you're a hip-hop fan seeing musical theater for the first time, or if you were thinking you were gonna see some reprise of 1776, and now it's this? And you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, these people aren't white!' It asks you just take a step and go a little deeper.

In 2005, I played Count Fosco in 'The Woman In White' on Broadway. It was a disaster. I was physically run down and terribly homesick and I just knew I had to leave. I lasted three months before the producers released me.

I couldn't believe it! I mean, I'd always dreamed of acting on the screen - my previous background was all theater - but I wasn't sure if the opportunity would ever present itself. Not only was this acting for the screen, this was acting in 'The Hunger Games!' I knew that I had to give this audition my all.

Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.

I have such pride in furthering the American musical and using it as a way to tell story.

There is a strange kind of parental pride when 'Topdog' ends up on Broadway, or 'Elaine Stritch.'

Performing doesn't turn me on. It's an egomaniac business, filled with prima donnas - including this one.

I had this fantasy. I would be at the Paramount Theater in New York and Louis Prima's drummer falls sick. The theater manager asks, 'Is there a drummer in the house?' I run up on stage and bang instant fame!

I will be singing primarily all the songs from the musicals that I have been in from over the years.

I'm primarily a character actress.

I was a poor kid. I grew up watching film and television but primarily television. And I graduated high school, and I knew I wanted to go to college because nobody in my family had. So I was like, 'I'll go and be a theater major.'

Our effects were primitive. Our stars were a black cloth with holes in it and light behind.

The best night of my life was watching the Japanese Noh theater. I've only seen it once, but even saying it now, I think, 'How can I ever have this experience again?' It was so mesmerizing, so complicated and so primordial; I could not believe it.

But it's a Broadway show, so even if you're Christine in Phantom, you're still a princess. All female leads are princesses whether they're Disney princesses or not.

My fantasy life was very full. Certainly when I was a kid, I probably wanted to be an actor because I wanted to be a princess, or something magical, and get to dress up magically, and have the kind of life that I hadn't been born into, with magic powers or whatever, and live this wonderful idealised life.

I was definitely in acting class in school, but I was never the princess of the play. I will always remember: they always gave me the part of the gypsy or the old man in the corner.

When I did 'Goodtime Charley' that helped a great deal, but 'Dancin' was such a huge hit. It catapulted me in to being a consistent principal to count on.

On general principle, I boycott shows that don't employ actors.

To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.