I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway.
As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.
There's something rather wonderful about the fact that Oxford is a very small city that contains most of the cultural and metropolitan facilities you could want, in terms of bookshops, theatre, cinema, conversation. But it's near enough to London to get here in an hour, and it's near enough to huge open spaces without which I would go insane.
All actors know that the real adrenaline rush is in doing theatre. There is an immediate connect, and a role in a play, for an actor, is the biggest temptation.
'1984' is terrifyingly relevant. It generates a political conversation, but it's an exciting piece of theatre. Every day, there are things to be spawned from Orwell's mind, whether it's in England or America, terrorist-related or government-related.
These days, gun violence can strike anywhere, from a church hall in Charleston to a movie theatre or a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado. But our response to it depends on whether that violence is understood to be terrorism.
I grew up listening to music and going to the theatre.
For someone who works in theatre, the rehearsal is where you discover everything. It is where magic happens, where the script enters you and becomes part of you.
It's great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people.
Theatre is about people, not buildings. Incalculable damage has been done to the expert talent a company needs - from wardrobe to lighting technicians.
I went to drama school in Paris and started doing theatre with a friend. Then I moved into movies and slowly but surely I got roles.
It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.
Theatre requires devotion that is all-consuming. When we started out, we didn't mind working 12 hours a day. We didn't mind going endlessly over and over a scene to make it right. I was the company's costumer for the first few years, and I remember the budget for 'Balm in Gilead' was $150.
I went through a low phase for two years when I had a string of flops. At that time, I even felt that I was in the wrong profession and that I should leave acting. But thankfully, I utilised that time to introspect and went on a self-exploration trip. I did theatre in between, and it helped grow the fire within me.
Neither my MFA from Yale School of Drama nor my BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University make me any different from other actors in film, television, or theatre.
I was such a wallflower in high school. I did a lot of extracurricular theatre shows, but at school, I spent a lot of time by myself. I ate lunch by myself, and I was always okay with it. But I was definitely made fun of, and I always felt like an outsider.
I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes.
I am a huge theatre geek.
My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.
I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience.
The bottom line is we go to theatre to vicariously spend time with really intense characters.
Great architects like Taut, Mendelsohn, and Gropius built some astonishing buildings which were to change the way architects around the world thought. Brecht and Weill forever changed musical theatre; Kaethe Kollwitz and others changed German perceptions of the purposes of art.
I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.
You fight for certain roles, and you realise they're being filled by television and film actors, because theatre is constantly fighting for survival and they need names and faces and ticket sales.
When I'm finished with politics, I'll have a richer life. I'd like to go to the theatre.
Television is hard work. It's all hard work. Theatre is hard work. I tell you, I have bruises from changing backstage. Those quick changes are really difficult.
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.
Being in TV, we get to do it again and again until it's 'right.' There's a part of me that likes the other way, that aspect of theatre where there's no chance to go back.
I've learnt that there's acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition.
I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college.
In the theatre, if you say 'Macbeth', all the actors will start looking very anxious. I'm so well-trained not to say it in the theatre that I can hardly say it in normal life.
I don't even think places like the National Youth Theatre (NYT) are necessarily about wanting to be an actor when you grow up. They're about meeting people from different backgrounds and different religions and different cultures, and mixing with people that you wouldn't ordinarily meet.
People have this impression that once you move to America, that becomes your interest. But I never moved to Los Angeles; I stayed in New York because I do theatre, so my aim is not just Hollywood.
Comics are not theatre - there's a very important difference in that the reader controls the page. You can linger on a page of comics as long as you want. You can read and go forward and then move back; you can reread, in one sitting or at your leisure. You can take as much time as you want to take in that story.
I started off dancing and playing sports, and I joined the drama stuff, the theatre stuff in middle school because my friends were involved, and it was kind of the cool thing to do.
It was quite a thespian - 'thespy' - sort of household. My mum had a dance school, and my dad now works in a theatre, so I spent a lot of time going to see dance as a young child - it was just a part of who we were.