Quotes About Theatre

I remember going to see 'Starlight Express' almost every birthday I had as a treat because I just loved it, and the idea that you could rollerskate in a sort of scary old theatre... It was sort of a novel concept.

Theatre is what I've always done, really, especially with the RSC, but I do bits and pieces on TV.

I don't tend to write articles and blogs because, I think, if you went into the theatre knowing that this is the writer's view on x, y, and z, it's just game over for the play.

I tend to make bolder and more interesting choices after I've done theatre.

Acting's boring.

I've never been that bothered about doing stage or television. I just love doing films. With theatre, it goes on night after night.

Action is always seen as the bottom rung of thespian endeavour, that's just the way it is.

I saw a play in a black box theatre, and it changed my life.

I hope for continued bravery and risk-taking for all theatremakers in 2018 and beyond.

Where film can eat up story, theatre needs space and breath.

I want to play in as many theatres as possible, work with as many brilliant people as possible, but definitely do a new play.

Both London and New York are brilliant for theatre.

When I look around at Broadway and the West End, theatre is becoming an exclusive club.

I want people to be obsessed with Broadway and theatre as much as I am.

I think my film 'Laila Majnu' was in theatres for 7 days and I was very excited. I attended as many shows I could in those 7 days because I was seeing myself on the big screen for the very first time. I was very excited. But then, sometimes there were 20 people, sometimes 5 or 1 or 2, that really broke my heart.

Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.

There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both.

You want to bring it every day. But if you have a bad day in the theatre, a couple of hundred people see it. That sucked; we'll get back to it. You have a bad day on film, it's just on DVD for the rest of your life.

Two songs I like are 'High Flying Adored' and 'Another Suitcase Another Hall,' both from 'Evita.'

I worked out that you could have an interplay of comedy and theatre and achieve more than the sum of its parts.

I was 12 when it really hit me. I did children's theatre camp during the summers and played a fairy in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' The next summer, I played Clytemnestra in 'Agamemnon' and I was like, 'OK, this is amazing.'

I had to turn down a part in 'Empire of the Sun.' It would have paid £15,000, which was a year's earnings for me then, but I was offered a season at the 'National Theatre.'

In the modern operas that 'Miss Saigon' and 'Les Miz' are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.

Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.