The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters.
I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.'
With 'True Detective,' you have a lot of time. How I like to describe it... it's like you're filming a theater piece.
By 1949, there was no more work for me out there, and I went to New York in 1950 and just did whatever I could. Mainly television. Some Broadway. A lot of dinner theater work, which is not a very satisfactory medium.
I wasn't that great in sports. I started doing children's theater and loved it. I thought I had a great thing going with musicals. I thought, 'I can do this. It's fun.' I wanted to go for it, and I thought I'd like to make a living doing this.
When I first started out in Houston, it was theater or bust. And I loved it. I still love it. And then I went to undergraduate and graduate school for acting.
Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usually, to reach the place where theater happens. On Broadway, only the fire doors separate you from the sidewalk, and you're lucky if the sound of a police car doesn't rip the envelope twice a night.
Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.
I used to watch a lot of musicals as a kid. Musical movies, not so much musical theater.
I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger, and I really hope to get back there someday. I miss singing a lot. I listen to Broadway show tunes in my car and sing along to them.
Once you start getting big roles as an actor, everything pays. So what are you making decisions on? It's about the director or the script or whatever. But before you reach that point, you're taking jobs with, say, a theater company, in spite of the fact that it's not paying your bills.
There's certainly nothing lasting and definite about the theater.
Well I'm not much of a singer. But it's been a really nice time to do film, television, theater and have it all happening at once. That wasn't planned but it just happens.
Please God, I hope my experience in downtown theater isn't over, because I'd love to keep making weird plays. I can't wait for Charles Isherwood to call my next play 'sit-com-y' and tell me to stick to writing television.
I'm kind of in love with my theater agent. I'm a true naive about the theater, a total innocent.
I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.
I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate.
I'm very much interested in doing actual theater.
I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater.
I did a lot of theater growing up, and in college I was in the musical 'Chicago.'
I come from the theater, and there is a real collaborative history there.
I have no problems with remakes, and I think it's interesting. I mean, coming from the theater, we've been remaking 'Hamlet' for a hundred years, so it's no problem to me at all. A good story can be told in many different ways in different places; I just think it's interesting.
I never had any film training. I went to Northwestern. I studied education and theater. So it was all theater training.
In the theater, you get very close with everyone, and you have to because you're with each other all the time. I respect it. It's a challenge, but it's very worth the hard work.
I think theater communities in cities can form really strong foundations.
I'm not a huge fan of improv theater or improv sports or whatever, because it still just looks like a tool. It looks like a technique to me.
I started studying theater in school, and then I got into drama school at, like, 19, and it was a national drama school in Montreal, and so it was just you and nine other students for three years, and it was really intense.
I know it sounds silly, but in auditions for film or TV, the words aren't as important - you need to get into the character and have the gist of the scene. But in theater, if you don't do it word for word, then you throw off your scene partner.
I thought I'd never do film, let alone television. I was a diehard theater nut.
Theater is a living creature. It takes a while to break in, like a new pair of shoes.
The three theater peeps I would love to dine with are Mel Brooks, because he is so funny; Stephen Sondheim, because he is a god-like genius; and Ethel Merman, to compare notes on fabulous belting.
Going to the theater is such a joyous experience. My dad would take my sister and me to plays when we were very young, like six or seven years old.
I was living in Seattle. I was 21 years old, just going to do theater. And I got a call that David Lynch was in town and wanted to meet with me.
Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.
I did get a degree in theater and took some voice-over classes.
I have gone to many theaters where it is so unpleasant with the commercials before the movie, the volume, and the disrespect of the filmgoers. So I understand people not wanting to go to the theater.
