Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.
Well, really the way worked was that I had probably built fifty robots before Mystery Science Theater, and I had sold them in a store in Minneapolis in a store called Props, which was kind of a high end gift shop.
I'm not one of those people who's against all-black productions of Tennessee Williams plays, but there are lot more complex and natural ways to bring people of color into the theater.
In some movies you feel like you're a very small part of a huge machine. Whereas in the theater you can have a very small part, but you can still feel the weight and the gravity of it. Given the nature of theater, it's a more concentrated and quiet experience.
I spent my childhood watching every scary movie that Hollywood ever made. And I think that gave me the best education for storytelling. It also made me want to reproduce the scary moments that I felt, sitting in a theater at the age of 5.
Theater has an incredible capacity to move people to social change, to address issues, to inspire social revolution.
I thought theater people wouldn't see me if I hadn't trained. I didn't want to just be the Brideshead guy, to spend the rest of my life wearing waistcoats. I got the chance to try everything. Not just Romeos, but pimps and grandfathers and even one role as a woman in a Naomi Wallace play called Slaughter City.
When I was young and growing up in New York, my parents took me to children's theater quite often - elaborate presentations of 'Goldilocks' and 'Rapunzel' for Upper East Side kids. As I grew older, they took me to adult theater, mostly musicals.
I really enjoy theater. Performing live onstage is helping me to grow as an actress.
In theater, the show must go on, so you train yourself to be able to nail it every single time because that's what the audience deserves, and that's the magic of live theater.
If I had a religious belief, I would want it to be as strong as my belief in the theater.
I think after coming off of 'American Idol'... people kind of expect you to just be awesome all the time, and we're still learning. I had a lot of stage experience, but it was in a 200-seat theater, you know - it wasn't thousands of people in front of me.
The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.
I left the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin in 2004, and I did five years of theater after that.
I believe there's no reason why we couldn't be entering a new age of musical theater if we continue to nurture young talent, take risks, and give them a playing field.
The mission of the A.R.T. is to expand the boundaries of theater through works of the canon and the new works of tomorrow.
For me, you say the words 'concept record,' and the first thing I think of is theater or the opera or something.
I was a dancer from about the age of four, so I was always performing and forcing my parents to watch my brother and I do 'Jesus Christ Super Star' in the living room. My first step was community theater, and then I started to do films.
With theater, depending on the audience, the show is different every night and really requires your constant concentration. With film, it's more possible to focus for shorter, more intense bits of time.
I'm not doubtful that I am doing what I should be doing - writing for theater - and that I'm doing it in a way no one else does it. Whether anyone else is paying attention or anyone else cares, I'm still ambivalent about that. It's still an open question.
Magneto has a whole lot of complexity to him. Emotionally, he's coming from a very damaged place. I like the ambivalence of it. I want the audience leaving the theater wondering, asking the questions themselves rather than being spoon-fed like a lot of these super-villain characters.
I had written for the theater and didn't know that I knew how to write for film. Ultimately, I think it's just trusting your voice, trusting your characters, and then telling them in a different medium.
Ever since I got on Days I've been doing theater.
We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it.
I earn a lot of money in England doing voice-overs, especially in documentaries. Turn on the Discovery Channel here, and you'll hear my voice a lot. It subsidizes my vice of acting in the theater.
I didn't necessarily set out to be in musical theater, but that's where my path has taken me, and I've been loving and enjoying it ever since.
I tried to double major in Psychology & Theater at Loyola Marymount but felt I needed to concentrate more on theater.
Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual.
When I was about seven, I started touring the globe as part of New York's La MaMa theater company - without my parents!
Unless an entire row of people got up in the middle of a performance and left the theater in disgust, I felt as though I hadn't done my job.
My favorite thing to hear from people is, 'I left the theater and couldn't stop thinking about it.' You want your work to have an impact after they leave the theater. It's the equivalent of leaving a musical humming a show tune.
In theater and dance, I was trying to win someone's approval, trying to get in, trying to be good. It felt out of my control, whereas music suddenly felt like this free expression. It was fun.
All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater. But that has to do with content and also because the venues seem to be actively trying to repel people.
I did a play called 'On Golden Pond' in a dinner theater in Maine and then went to New York for a talent competition having put together a three-man juggling routine and some one-liners and I got myself an agent from that.
All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater.
There's nothing like the energy in a small comedy club room or a small theater when it's going really well. I can see everybody's face practically in the whole room. There's no cameras in the way, and it's just me.
