John Tiffany Quotes

For me, I can't live without acting or drama and writing - I also run a theater company.

My first writing job was with a company called TheatreworksUSA.

I wrote 'The Room', 'The Birthday Party', and 'The Dumb Waiter' in 1957, I was acting all the time in a repertory company, doing all kinds of jobs, traveling to Bournemouth and Torquay and Birmingham.

I went to UCLA as pre-med. When I was there my freshman year, I auditioned for a play and got it, and I was so passionate. I just loved acting so much that I decided to switch majors and pursue acting.

I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I'd begun to write a little bit.

The theater business has allowed me, in a way the movie and TV business has not, to do very, very interesting work. So that's what I do.

In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.

When I went to university, I was already working professionally with the Ulster Actors.

I always assumed I'd spend my life happily performing in artsy-fartsy little theaters.

In 1993, I was working at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

Broadway's never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there's a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens.

I didn't particularly aim to be a Shakespeare actor, but I suppose I had a certain gift or it; I certainly got offered lots of it. I liked Complicite and Shared Experience and Kick Theatre, and all the small theatre companies that were getting going. I wanted to be like that, making original theatre.

I wrote my first play when I was nine. It was performed at Hampstead Theatre.

I didn't aspire to be on Broadway.

When I was going through school, I joined the Lyceum Youth Theatre, and that kind of cemented it. Through being in and around the building and watching shows, I realised that there was something I really loved about it, so I went into the stage management side.

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.

I loved English at school and realised I would enjoy studying plays. I got into Royal Holloway. They had a little studio theatre where we put on plays, and that's what I realised I wanted to do. So from there, I went to the Old Vic theatre school to learn how to do it properly.

I want to write novels, and I want to write and direct theater.

I never went into acting to do film. I went into it to do theatre - classical roles.

Despite the digital age, there is a very large number of venues and spaces that are looking for plays, and many of them are looking for new plays.

I'm fascinated by movies and enjoy that, of course, but always, the measure of how you are functioning in the arts was theater.

I spent a lot of time in Chicago at a place called The Annoyance Theater, where we would develop one-act plays through improv, and you would just improvise scenes and then discover something about the character and use it in the next scene.

A lot of American playwrights seem to have a career as a playwright. I don't consider it a career at all.

My first play was 'The Room', written when I was twenty-seven.

Why should I write a play? I don't have to write a play, do I? But somehow, I think that's what I'm here for, so I'd better do it.