Sarah Sutton Quotes

A play is not a play until it's performed, and unless it's a one-person play that is acted, directed and designed by the author, many other people will be deeply involved in the complicated process that leads to its performance.

And so I've always been fascinated by the technical end of theater, and a lot of my closest friends are not actors, but in the other end of the business.

I would love to do a musical. I would love that. I would have to find the right book, the right story, but some day I'm going to make one. I would really like to go off and direct a musical. That's what I would really like to do when I grow up.

I grew up near New York, and there were a lot of summer stock theaters in the area. I started an apprenticing with some of the theaters. Not really acting in them - I did everything else: everything but act.

Why did I want to become a director? I just had an early interest. My uncle was an actor in a local community theatre, and he ultimately persuaded me and a buddy of mine to come to that theatre, and we went to meet girls, and that turned into interested in kind of behind-the-scenes things, and from that point on, I was focused.

I did theatre a lot when I was a kid. Then I went to acting school in New York. I did a lot of behind the scenes in college. I wanted to learn while I had the time. I studied theatre and film in different capacities.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

One fine day I discovered that more complex plays really have to be directed.

My background is in theater. I was a theater major in college.

I have always wanted to work in the theater. I've always felt the glamour of being backstage and that excitement, but I've never actually done it - not since I was in 5th grade, really. But I've had many plays in my films. I feel like maybe theater is a part of my movie work.

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.

Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the director, whose job it is to grapple with the myriad complexities of moving a play from the page to the stage.

I did a brief stint with set design and stage design. And I tried playwriting, too.

I'm preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that's coming up in New York City.

I'm very into the first production of the show.

Architecture was always the plan. I always figured I'd just do theater on the side.

I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines.

I've done a lot of things with theater that I'm very, very proud of.

That's the difference between working on film and working in a play. In a play, you work on it, and you live in it and develop it and make it happen.

Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

Where I teach students in drama school, there's a course called Dramatics. In this course, all students must put on a play. However, acting majors are not supposed to act. They can write the play, for example, and the writers may work on stage art. Likewise, stage art majors may become actors, and in this way you put on a show.

I paid my dues at drama school and worked backstage in every Theatre in London.

Every show is a mess at its first preview. No one's had enough time to rehearse in costumes, traffic patterns backstage haven't been worked out, machinery weighing thousands of pounds is being operated for the first time. And, also, it's the first time all the material you've written is before the public.

I went to a theater arts school, so I'm interested in many different projects, whether it be film, television or even live theater. I'm a performer. That's what I do. That's what I want to do.

What you don't see backstage is what really controls the show.