Quotes About Theatre

When I first came out with my fans and the wind hit me, I almost took off.

A lot of my background is in theatre, so when you're on location, and the wind is really blowing, it's raining, and you've got mud all over you, it really keeps you on your toes.

'Philistines' was so beautiful, and it bored me to death. I never want to see another production where the rain splashes against a window and actors wander around in drab cardigans saying, 'I'm so bored.'

What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.

My mum was no pushy parent. She would drop me off for auditions when I was in my teens at the Lyric Theatre, then give me my bus fare and say she would see me later at home. She wasn't hanging around in the wings geeing me on. I had to do it on my own; it was up to me.

Part of the reason I fell in love with cricket was watching fast bowlers. They provide a sense of theatre with dramatic, ferocious spells and that applies as much in one-day cricket as in Tests.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

I find it difficult to remember lines. When I'm doing a long speech for television, I sometimes have an earpiece with someone feeding me the text. But I can get by in the theatre if I study hard for a couple of months.

When I directed the 'Ring' cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York recently, there were people texting all through the show. But theatre isn't a communication device: it's a communion.

Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged.

To me, the most important elements in a theatre are the actors and the texts.

Collaboration to me is... my favorite collaboration in the theatre is the collaboration between the actors and the audience because it's just that thing that happens when the only thing left that is left on the human scale is that human beings come to look at other human beings act out stories.

I think the only directing I'd be any good at is theatre directing. It's the only thing I can see myself doing.

One of the things about being a law student is that the academic discipline of law is very often removed from the practical reality of law. How to complain, who to complain to, and whether or not you even need to invoke the law is very different in the real world from how it's examined in the lecture theatre.

I'm such a theater geek.

There's no real theatre without taking risks.

Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.

Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.

I want my audience to be constantly captivated, bewitched, so that it leaves the theatre dazed, stunned to be back on the pavement.

I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre... but they don't. They expect to sit back and not participate.

The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren't necessarily familiar with, the more open you become.

I guess I've been extremely keen on theatre, on getting on to the stage, taking on different roles, enacting vocations, personalities, people, situations, and I guess that's the interest that has driven me to work in movies.

In the theatre, the actor is given immediate feedback.

A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.