Stephen Daldry Quotes

You know, we're not on stage, we're not doing a play, so we don't have a relationship with the audience but going through that process and also just hearing how much people love the film, you feel like you do have a relationship with the audience.

Audiences are an unknown mystery to me, so I can't really predict anything. For me, the best audience is myself, my crew, and the actors.

You need an audience to help you figure out what's working and what's worth putting on your album or your special - or even just what's worth touring with.

In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.

I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.

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

I love writing plays because they are living, fluid things that are energised by the producer, designers, musicians, actors and audience.

I get a lot of inspiration from the audience feedback to our live shows.

As an actor, you know when you've got great material in front of you. When you're working, you think, 'Is this the one? The one that everyone will respond to and be moved by?' You pray that you have told the story well... that your peers will see it and audiences will love it.

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.

It's rare that you cut out something that is really good. You screen all of it, and when the audience doesn't respond, you cut out whatever is holding the story down.

It's nice to get the feedback from a theater audience. It's a gas.

I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

There have been times when I've written something and it goes out and it comes back in a letter from some kid as to what they think about it and I've taken their analysis to heart so much that I have taken up his thing. Writing what my audience is telling me to write.

I know 'Dabangg' has some pre-requisites. Every film has some requisites that you have to fulfill. I sat down with my writer and discussed what as an audience I want to see in the second part of the film. We worked towards that and we hope what we thought connects with the 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.

I'm fascinated to see how 'Black Watch' connects with an American audience.

The crowd is the crowd. You're gonna take them as an individual performer how you take them. The key is how do you learn from them. How do you use whatever is happening reaction-wise to get better.

When you are making a film, you do not know how it is going to be received by the audience. In fact, if you set out to make a film thinking that it will make 100 crores, it never ends up making that much money.

We tend to see films as artifacts of one mind. The reality of it is, I think, when you come out here and start working, you have to learn pretty quickly that it's a very collaborative process.

We write and write and write until we think, 'If we have to shoot this script, we'll be happy, and it's going to be a great movie.' I meet with all the actors two weeks before, and I ask them, 'What lines don't work? What is uncomfortable for you? What jokes do you think aren't good? If you're not getting it, here's what the joke is.' You fix it.

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.

Listener and reader input is every bit as important as anything any of us can say. We'd be like crazy people chattering in the middle of that empty field that Joe Biden thinks we should stand in to be safe from swine flu if it weren't for the calls, the letters, the blogs, and the reaction from our audience.

I think acting is boring because you have to sit for a long time. And being a director I am used to running around and being busy on sets. I lack the actor software.