Moss Hart Quotes

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that.

You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?

I don't think musicals are my thing. I'm not a big fan. Definitely have to get on the stage and do something like a straight play.

If you put on an Oscar Wilde [play], it will interest those who are interested in Oscar Wilde. But it won't interest anybody else, because they won't get that wit.

Plays have to be made, and we have to find a way to make them. All of us.

I think theatre reminds us what we're doing as actors, because every night and every matinee day, you have an audience telling you what's working and what's not. And that's very good for us as actors to hone our skills.

I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas.

The play's the thing.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

I'm not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it.

The truth is you don't like the theater except the times when you're in a room by yourself putting the play on paper.

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".

I have worked with Tarell Alvin McCraney, who is the play Moonlight is based on. He's a company member at Steppenwolf. I have done a could of his plays here.

Focus on the play like it has a history and a life of its own.

Performing in a live theater is absolutely unbeatable. It is something I have done my entire life and have a gift, it seems, for sharing thoughts live.

I've always said I prefer theater, but there's only ever been one play that I really loved doing, and that was The Seagull.

I love the theater because I love the live audience and when we went three cameras we have a live audience in the study so we had someone to play to and react to. That laughter.

I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.

A musical is the same as a burlap sack, I would not want to be in either

When you come to actually act, it's a game. It may be a very serious game, but it's still a game. If you lose that sense of play, the work suffers.

I mean there’s a certain finality about a movie, when it’s done it’s done – that raised eyebrow in that moment will always be that raised eyebrow. Whereas a play only lives as a blueprint for a performance on any given night. There’s a reason you can eat popcorn and watch a movie and you can’t do that in the theatre. Theatre you have to lean in, you have to tune your ear to the stage and participateI respond to heat. And blood. And humanity. The cold experience is not for me. I’ve always enjoyed all the real people in a room together in the theatre.

When the play is still evolving I try to be at rehearsal as often as possible, and part of that casting process. You find new things when the language is living in different people's mouths.

The true theater, because it moves and makes use of living instruments, continues to stir up shadows where life has never ceased to grope its way.

So somehow, things that seem extraneous to the play in reality are not. The scene lasts 37 minutes, and you only need 12 minutes of that for the plot. But if you pull the rest of it out, it's not my play.

The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art.