Diana Rigg Quotes

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

From a very young age, I wanted to get up on stage whenever I went to the theatre - the actors just seemed to be having so much fun. One of my worries about theatre, in fact, is that the actors are quite often having more fun than the audience.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

I pray to be of service to the playwright, the audience, the other actors and my character.

Even if the play is great, every day in theatre you have to question everything because the audience is new every day. I love that.

People assume that actors working in films won't have the time to do theatre. But I make sure that whenever I'm free, I watch a play.

I sing all the time, and my co-actors from theatre arena feel that my choice of songs and timing is bad - not that I pay heed, though.

To me, the most important elements in a theatre are the actors and the texts.

If you want to please the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow.

I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another.

I'll go in a minute to see a sketch show.

I know that some people who move into film lose their nerve for the stage.

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

I love film, but I feeling a bit needy about returning to the stage.

Our job as actors is to just try to be as accurate and as mindful of what the audience is going through and receiving and processing.

I love musicals; I just couldn't book one to save my life.

My dad was the cause of me being in show business. He was not only in poetry but in acting a bit. He was Mordecai in the play 'A Dream of Queen Esther.'

I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.

There are some actors who see a show as something to do before going out.

The first stage play I ever did was a school play called 'The Wishing Chair.'

Any actor worth his salt is looking for truth, the core of truth of the particular situation he is portraying, of that play. The playwright, the actors and the audience, that's what we're all there seeking. When it's working, time is destroyed. Sometimes 'Moon,' a play of four hours, would go by in a snap of the fingers.

The conversation of how you do a play is my favorite conversation in the whole wide world: what a play is, why it's different than anything else, the math of the way that human behavior has to be calibrated theatrically versus anything else.

Whenever I do a play, there are 'Star Wars' fans at the stage door, and they're always lovely - so excited and so effusive about the storylines and the characters. When you're doing something really serious, and the 'Star Wars' fans are waiting outside, it's a nice juxtaposition.

We can't figure out why any time we play in the East, the critics either ignore us or write a pretty bad review of the show.

Many talented actors have come into this industry and, in spite of their best efforts, haven't been able to win over the audience.