Abi Morgan Quotes

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

The first role I played was Madame Ranevsky in 'The Cherry Orchard.'

Theatre is like an actor's nectar, like how cinema is a director's medium.

I played Benedick in 'Much Ado About Nothing' nearly 30 years ago at the RSC, alongside Susan Fleetwood as Beatrice, and I loved every minute.

I'm doing a play at Trafalgar Studios with The Jamie Lloyd Company - 'The Maids' by Jean Genet with Uzo Aduba and Laura Charmichael, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It's one of my favourite plays by one of my favourite playwrights.

'Hedwig' was born in '94. I was thinking of a theater piece; Hedwig was one of the characters.

Theatre is for you if you truly want to act and test yourself. There is no room for error as you are performing in front of a live audience.

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.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

I'm not an actor who appears on the stage and gives people advice on how to live or what to do and entertains them. It is not my specialty.

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'

I kind of got lost down a road of TV and film, so it's great to come back to theatre.

I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights.

I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium.

There is so much freedom I enjoy in theatre. In films, the roles are limited.

Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.

When I began to act, I was about 6 years old. Everything you learned, every period of history you studied, you did a play about it.

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

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.

My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting.

You always remember the delicacy of the work you do on a new play - the delicacy and the rigor and the courage.

Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing.

Acting on stage is still my favorite thing to do. And everyone who's been in musicals knows that there is nothing more fun.

Now I can't wait to write my next play.