Phyllida Lloyd Quotes

Dealing with actors is incredibly complex because they oftentimes are like pieces of clay. They want to be told how you want it done. You have to then decide if you want to be the teller or if you want to give them agency.

Every week it's another opportunity to really make that work and figure out how to make it work better. And I love that it's like theater, too, and the audience, and it's so short. It's only 20 minutes. It's like a haiku or something.

Usually when I start a new project there's a fear of the unknown; maybe it's a band I've never been in the studio with before. People are so different. It's almost like you need to go through the process, discover and unlock what it is that makes that band that band. And a lot of times they don't know it.

It's always great when a director is just supportive of what you're doing. They're not so much critiquing you but giving you more ideas, giving you tons of things to work with, making you question your character and making you think about it... and making it seem like everything is limitless. That usually helps a lot.

I love making stuff. There's a joy in having the first molecule of an idea, then testing it in front of audiences at secret shows that people only know about the day before. I videotape those, study them, enjoy being in the character and figuring out the movie.

I think the community that's created within a writers' room is a very interesting topic.

The relationship with the cast has everything to do with how a performance develops, and in a sense that while you're discovering a play in the course of rehearsal with the director, you're also discovering it with your fellow actors. We're all in it together.

There's no way to really mock up or simulate what I'm doing until I'm there. An exhibition for me is not a statement but an experiment.

I learned that the best way to work is to allow the scene to live on its own before making major adjustments, whether in rehearsal or on film.

In many ways, theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall - that when the play is finished, it's done - but now I realise it's more like gardening; you plant the thing, then you have to constantly tend it. You're part of a thing that's living.

Then I sit down, work at it, because now I have a convincing feeling about what that place wants to be, you see? And it's not just me. Me and my talent comes in taking that consensus and then making something wonderful out of it - a work of art.

I hardly ever go into the studio with a work complete in my head. It emerges from communal activity.

I understood that I was not the best director in the world nor the worst director in the world. I realized that there is a very mysterious element to what works and what doesn't work in the theater. And it's good to know that from the beginning.

My work is very popular with performers, and there are theatre people who get what I'm doing and what tradition I'm working in. I'm very grateful to them - they're my people, who understand why I work the way I do.

I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

The great fun for me is these collaborators. I'm nothing by myself. Being with these people, whether it's the 'Homeland' cast or stage collaborators, they make you everything you are. They make you come to work. They make you be alive.

It's like a kitchen, acting. Put a chef in a kitchen and they will have different recipes. Whatever your recipe, what works for you won't work for another.

Then I came in twice a week - for my own enjoyment as well as to be a guide. And then we started to apply some of the splinters of the ideas back into the piece.

I think filmmaking is a strange animal because it's anti-Democratic and collective at the same time, but I think it's all about not trying to know everything better than everybody else but making the right choices.

I'm not the only one in the studio a lot of times, so I have my boys in there and they'll tell me and give me their suggestions and what they think.

It's such a joy to work with different ensembles and create a collaboration. Rehearsing and building a performance is very interesting for me.

When I put something into motion, the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed. I'm just like a shark, in that way. If I stop swimming, I'll die. But, it really is about that shared experience with people. I'm from theater, and that's really what theater feels like.

I love being a very personal singer-songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer.

But things can happen in a band, or any type of collaboration, that would not otherwise happen.