Quotes About Theatre

There's a certain type of theatre that I haven't got any time for at all - established, boring, same-old stuff without any reason or passion. There's quite a lot of it about, and it motivates me to try to do something different, something risky, raw, ugly, and challenging.

It ultimately becomes an asset to be part of a theatrical family if, indeed, you're good at what you do.

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman.

I went to study in Spain for a year after school. It was either that or Russian, so I went for the easy option. I love Spain and go quite regularly. I've done a bit of Spanish theatre.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

Generally speaking, actors are allowed NO input. Actors are dumb.

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to crime: the realistically detailed police procedural, usually grim and downbeat, and the more left-field, joyous theatre of ideas in which past masters once specialised. Knowing that I would never be able to handle the former, I set about reviving the latter.

Now there are certain things you have to prepare - like dialect and special skills. But in the moment, interaction between two characters on the page doesn't need - for me, I don't need to prepare that.

Everything happens every night for this audience, and it's a very special occasion to come to the theatre.

Film has become a very passive experience, but with theatre, there is a contract made with the audience, where they participate. That's why my parents' puppet theatre was such a special place - people used their imaginations. It's a muscle that needs using.

If you want to get into the shoes of someone, it's not just about seeing and hearing. It is also about what you touch and what you smell. Smell is so specific and so powerful. And this is the beauty of immersive theatre - it's something you cannot get in any other art form. I think this is the real future for theatre.

I've always loved and enjoyed the theatre, but I have to say that none of our sponsorships have been done because I'm one of those chairmen and chief executives who goes gooey-eyed about something. They are done for a very specific marketing and commercial agenda.

I always loved acting. I always loved realism. I loved the theatre, specifically small audience, real-sets stuff.

The Saving Our Cinderellas program is a facet of Saving Our Daughters which is more specifically geared towards using music, theatre, film and television as a means to help build self-esteem in our girls by developing programs that allow them to discover, explore and express their individuality using the arts.

I did some theatre straight out of school, and it wasn't anything spectacular at all.

Asim has done English theatre with Naseeruddin Shah and his group, Hindi theatre with Makarand Deshpande, and Marathi theatre with me. He is a hardworking actor - I am not saying this just because he is my son but as an actor and spectator.

We will get back to the earlier, instinctive and less inhibited nature of theatre. Today, spectators are passive, but Elizabethan, Greek and Roma; theatre was interactive.

My high school experience was kind of like 'Mean Girls.' It was very much like a bad B movie. 'This is where the jocks sit, and this is where the cheerleaders sit.' And I never really fit in. I guess I was sort of a theatre geek, but the activity that I was most invested in was speech and debate.

I've spent more money on my theatres since I bought them than I did buying them.

Film is not as exhilarating, not as physically, mentally, or spiritually challenging, as theatre.

The Old Vic is special to me because that's where I began. I lived in New Bond Street in London in a flat that cost 4.20 a week. I split the rent with friends. We used to go to concerts, theatres, we went to the Proms.

My mum took me to the theatre a lot, and I'd obsess over them for weeks after. She took me to see 'The Blue Room' at The Royal Exchange when I was 13, and that was a profound moment for me - I remember really wanting to be an actor. It really spoke to me like nothing else had before.

Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken. That's why I think so many really powerful novelists can't write a play - because they don't understand that it's spoken - that it hits the air. They don't get that.

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.