Kenneth Tynan Quotes

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas. Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I was writing a story, and it took me years. And when I finished, a friend of mine had the idea that the story should be read as a monologue in a theater.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.'

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.

I believe that the story is the most important element of any medium whether it's theater, film, TV.

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

Normally, you spend the play convincing people of the world and the characters.

Actors, we like stories, we like storytelling, we love being a part of the story, and if you give us a story that's interesting then we'll want to do it.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

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.

Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?

Characterization is integral to the theatrical experience.

For me, the drive is storytelling. To be a part of an art that tells a story and to be a catalyst, a color in that, is very exciting.

Storytelling is storytelling. Good stories need compelling characters and interesting conflicts. That's the bottom line no matter what medium you're writing for.

As soon as you get two actors in a room and they're locking eyes, they're doing a scene.

Now I can't wait to write my next play.

I love drama. I love to play an arc.

I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director. So most of my songs come in a play form, you know, where there are characters and stories, so I like to go beyond just the song sometimes.

Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.

Same job, whether it's comedy or drama. Regardless of the weight of the role, I feel like the job is always kind of the same. Who is this person? What's this guy here, and how is he playing with this thing, and what's he trying to say? And what's the volley with all these other people around him?

Writing plays supplied for me everything that painting didn't, which is the ability to tell stories in real time, in a real space, in three dimensions, in flesh and blood. I realized I had been trying to cram all this narrative into my paintings, but ultimately painting was a static medium. So it just opened up this whole new door.

A play is not a tweet. It can't be compressed and embedded, and it definitely can't be delivered apologetically.

I've always written about other artists, or I write my thoughts down, but I've never written a story.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B, and C.