John Lahr Quotes

Theatre is a living organism. You only know if your show is working when you see it with an audience. You can also tell when it isn't working - it's horrible, and you desperately try to figure out how to make it connect.

I went into performing for the community. Being backstage with your company of fellows is the best part of working in live theater. That energy, that combined focus, the synergy - it's addictive.

I love the rehearsal process in the theatre, and the visceral sense of contact and communication with a live audience.

There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.

In theatre there is a certain discipline that you have to follow, and you have to be experienced to be performing in front of a live audience. It is satisfying to me.

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

Theatre is live content, and you can tell if you have worked your audience.

In theatre, I loved doing '2nd May 1997' at the Bush. Jack Thorne is a brilliant writer, and it was really exciting and felt new and different for me.

In theatre, previews are the first draft of a show. I strongly believe that. The only way we can truly tell whether that draft works is by having an audience present.

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

There's nothing like the spontaneity of making something work on stage.

As theater artists, it's a great luxury to have time.

I love theater. To have the people onstage right there, to be working in concert with other artists, this is a like a school of fish moving together.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor.

I write things in my house, and hopefully there's a reader out there who enjoys it and has an experience with it, but that's very different than a performer on stage, where there's an immediate dance with the audience. It's incredibly powerful.

I love the instantaneous nature of filming rather than the repetition of working in the theatre, but that maybe because I haven't had great experiences working in the theatre.

When you're talking about pure form, theater is a wonderful outlet.

Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.

Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

I grew up wanting to be a writer for theatre.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

Stage performing is a dying art form.

I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?

I've directed a couple of times in the theater, but I wouldn't make a habit of it because it's too consuming.