Baltasar Kormakur Quotes

We remake 'Hamlet' all the time. That's sort of what we do, humans.

The wonderful thing about theater as an art form is it's a purely empirical art form. It's all about what works. And every show, every production, is created anew right from the moment you go into the rehearsal hall.

Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before... Whether it's playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that.

A good story, a story resonant and remarkable, can be remade endlessly to tell new sides of itself for new generations of readers.

I like the idea of taking a true classic written by a true genius and destroying it essentially! I like the idea of bringing it down to earth a bit - and even a bit lower than that.

I directed a piece of theater in Italy. We took nine fables from the town and we created a play.

I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.

'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Theater is about surprises and things that you haven't seen before on stage.

I love Sherlock Holmes. There's still an awful lot to steal from Conan Doyle. But within a tradition you can work in many different ways.

When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

There's something about getting onstage in a play where the actor tells the story, beginning, middle, and end, the way they want to tell it. For me, it's the most powerful place to be, and it's the most empowering place to be.

I was drawn to performing and to storytelling.

Curating, in the modern sense, is something I gravitate to. Taking different ideas from a bunch of different places and putting them into one place or space, a story that makes sense or a new idea. Everything is remixed and taken from other things to make something new.

What I am used to is 'Gali Guleiyan,' and people talking about my performances, what new I have tried in terms of my craft or the skill of storytelling.

I actually grew up seeing a lot of classical theater - a lot of Shakespeare - but I have such a passion for music and find that way of telling a story to be really compelling as well.

A show could be 10 minutes, seven minutes, 94 minutes. We just need to tell the stories that need to be told.

You travel the world, you go see different things. I like to see Shakespeare plays, so I'll go - I mean, even if it's in a different language. I don't care, I just like Shakespeare, you know. I've seen Othello and Hamlet and Merchant of Venice over the years, and some versions are better than others. Way better. It's like hearing a bad version of a song. But then somewhere else, somebody has a great version.

There are a lot of wrong reasons to do a remake, but there are some good ones... I think it's human nature, in many ways, to retell our favorite stories. We do it in the theater, all the time. I've seen four different 'Hamlets,' and every one has given me something different.

One cannot make up stories; one can only retell in new ways the stories one has already heard.

I used to be like "Why are we doing a remake? What are remakes being done for?" But then, we do that all the time in the theater. Retelling stories is what we've done since we were sitting around campfires. It's a part of the human spirit. It doesn't have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite.

Sometimes you know the story. Sometimes you make it up as you go along and have no idea how it will come out.