Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.
I've been acting for 25 years, living out of suitcases on theater tours or film locations.
To be in theater you have to be a kind of psychologist, for you're always trying to understand character and motives.
I didn't have any role models. I really thought I was doomed to this loveless, lonely life. I didn't know any gay people until I began doing theater.
You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.
I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).
I was as happy doing theater in New York for little or no money as I am now doing television for more money. The happiness, I guess, comes out of it being a good job. The success has to do with the fact that it's a good job that will continue.
In theater, you're playing characters. You believe you're somebody else, and you're acting.
I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.
I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the ghosts of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare, but what it is to be a playwright, to be interacting with human beings in the live theater and affect people on such a direct, emotional level.
I'm an improviser. I came up doing improv at the U.C.B. Theater in New York for seven years. That's where I started, so improv is what I love.
In the theater, you go from point A to point Z, building your performance as the evening progresses. You have to relinquish that control on a film.
Out of nowhere, I became a fairly well-known director with a penchant for opera, which I did for 10 years. Then I realized I was taking myself out the theater channel, and so I re-focused on theater.
I think theater is powerful. The best experiences I had in the theater are more powerful than the best experiences I had in movies.
In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.
In Mexico, theater is very underground, so if you're a theater actor it's very difficult to make a living. But it's also a very beautiful pathway to knowledge and to an open education.
L.A. is so focused on TV and film that theater is kind of an arcane sport. People look at you like you're doing something cute.
I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.
Fairy tales are with us day in and day out, not just in commercials, but references in the theater, movies, museums, schools, etc.
I've been acting since I was six. I actually played a boy when I was six in 'Tommy.' I played Tommy and they put a wig on me. They put up my hair and put this little boy wig on me and that was my first acting experience. Then I did some other professional theater. I did Shakespeare when I was older.
I like the theater enormously, but I truly love films - the whole bizarre, boring process that it can be.
My love for the theater has always been a priority. That hasn't changed. I got into acting that way. The film work that came up was really a surprise.
I always ended up having the funny part in Shakespeare, but I really thought I'd be doing theater. That was my ambition for myself.
I'm supposed to be a pretty good theater actor.
I have this set-up at my house where I have one big movie theater screen that's 9 ft. by 16 ft. Then, I have nine 63-inch monitors around it; four on either side and one underneath. So I get all nine one o'clock games, and I can switch them onto the big screen. That's what I do on the Sundays during the season.
I have been in the business long enough to know what an intense amount of work it takes to operate a theater company.
The shows at the Hilton are the most exciting shows I've ever done. The stage is huge, but the theater is intimate, so we can have a magnificent production and still connect with the audience.
I'm doing a play, a musical. The musical follows the Mamma Mia concept. It's my first LA theater project.
People who are interested in the arts and theater are such a minority.
I've never been passionate about just music, I've never seen myself going into music in that sense. My love for music has always been connected to the stories told through music, which is why I was drawn to theater and why I think 'Glee' is so powerful.
There's such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn't appropriate another's inventions.
If the Tony Awards want to remain relevant in the American theater conversation, then they need to embrace the true diversity of voices that populate the American theater.
The adrenaline of a live performance is unlike anything in film or theater. I can see why it's so addictive.
I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!
I went to a college in New York called New Paltz. I studied theater there for four years. I also studied privately in NYC with a teacher named Robert X. Modica.
The visceral experience of seeing a movie in three dimensions, coming at you in the theater, is obviously here to stay, because it is a unique experience. I think that kind of format is only appropriate for some genres, but I'm all for it.
