James Lapine Quotes

Nobody should expect an actor to have these wonderful ideas and concepts about the world: they pretend to be other people for a living.

I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.

When I write plays, I'm already seeing the shapes on stage, of the actors and their interaction, and so on and so forth. I don't think I've ever written one play as an abstract piece, as a literary piece, floating in the air somewhere, to be flushed out later on.

On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

I truly enjoy directing. I enjoy looking at the words on the paper and visualizing how to make them come to life.

The whole point about becoming an actor is variety and changing roles.

I like having the script before I start. With new plays, you're constantly developing as you're doing it. It's really frightening. You don't quite know how it's going to end up.

The gift of working on a Robert O'Hara play is that you have to trust his language. It's all in there. You don't have to add one single thing.

I'm trained in the theater, and acting, for me, is about the imaginative life I create for myself, not about basing it on something real. I think that whatever I create becomes the reality for the audience.

My first real job as a director was working with Robbie Baitz on his play 'Three Hotels.' It was an incredible collaboration.

When it comes to writing musicals, you write the best piece you can. Then, its destiny is in the hands of the actors and the director.

I think visually... so, even when I'm writing a play, I'm envisioning it.

Writing a play to get to Broadway and have a national tour is a sure way to write a terrible, terrible play.

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

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.

I think that there is a real beauty to the live aspect of the theater, and the working with a director for a month on a script in the isolation of a room and really deeply delving into who are these people, what is the story we're telling, how do we want to tell it?

Theater is the best. That's where you get the work done. You just really get in there and figure something out about a story or a character or life or the world. That's where magic stuff happens.

When I start a film, I can sort of shut my eyes, sit somewhere quiet and imagine the movie finished. I can imagine the camera angles, I can even imagine the type of music. Without knowing the tune, I can imagine the type of music it needs to be.

I never write a play with an eye to film.

I love the creative end of acting. But I hate fame.

I try to think of the songs as little movies. They're always pretty visual to me. I can always sort of see them. I don't always know what the end result is going to be, and I don't know exactly what it's going to sound like, but I can kinda see them.

Whatever you can think, you can create; just have a very clear vision... Once you have your snapshot, work on filling in the blanks to get to that place.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser

I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.