Richard Greenberg Quotes

I did this play, 'Expedition 6,' that I worked on for three years in between other things. It was a good, interesting time for me because I trained as a theater director, and I went back, and we toured it around.

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.

Plays are so much more special if they've never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.

When you go to a show on opening night, or even the second performance, it is at the very beginning of what it will become. By the end of this run, the show will actually be what it is intended to be.

I'm a kid that went to theater school. I thought I was going to be making my living doing plays regionally or in New York or on Broadway, and maybe if I got lucky I would do a movie here or there.

It's exciting to do something like this because usually what happens in theater is that, after the first or second reading of a play, it falls apart completely and the rehearsal process is such that you begin to pick up the pieces and put it back together again.

I like having the script before I start. With new plays, you're constantly developing as you're doing it. It's really frightening. You don't quite know how it's going to end up.

I spent a lot of time in the trenches in New York doing a lot of off-off-off Broadway theater.

The truth is you don't like the theater except the times when you're in a room by yourself putting the play on paper.

The directors were often really nice and I was well behaved, so I would just sit there in rehearsal. That allowed me to see the process - not just the result, the red carpet, all of the wonderful, fun things that happen afterwards - the nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty, "Let's try to build this character from the page," tech rehearsals.

When the play is still evolving I try to be at rehearsal as often as possible, and part of that casting process. You find new things when the language is living in different people's mouths.

The performance is created by the director. The actor is the material. And I think that has to be true.

I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.

I did a couple of little Off-Broadway things, but my first Broadway show was A History Of The American Film, written by Chris Durang. Swoosie Kurtz was one of the stars. It was a wonderful show. It closed in 40 performances. I think it was kind of ahead of its time.

I personally think if you're given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way, the play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There's no doubt in my mind about it.

I began writing for theater, and maybe because of that I've always thought of myself as a theater writer who does work in film sometimes.

I started as a director, but I was too bored with actors. I preferred to act.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

I wrote a play before that and it never saw the light of day. And then I started working on this play and it came out really quickly. Eventually I got it, and I wrote a letter to Sarah Jessica Parker and she wanted to do it. So that's how it happened.

If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.

I've been dealing with so much press for Brooklyn, and now I am rehearsing for a play, and it is hard.

Coming at the acting business as a technician, I really enjoy the process of working. I really enjoy being in a rehearsal room, starting a theatre piece for the first time. I really enjoy shooting in front of the crew, and I really love going on location. I think all that is just so exciting. So I've never really been drawn into the fame of being an actor, which in L.A., is part and parcel of the deal. I think for a lot of people, especially kids, it's hard to not get wrapped up in the world of the perks that the job brings.

I did play a dentist in Waiting for Guffman. I wrote the speech at the conference. In the original script, when it got to that scene, it was, 'Thank you very much. Good night.' Literally. I just thought, 'He keeps talking about this speech. The keynote address is the big thing in his life and this is too important to say, "Thank you. Good night." I think we have to see and hear him doing what he does.' So I got together with my dentist and we worked through a few things.

The play is really a kind of nightmare. It ought to flow rapidly and effortlessly from one moment to another. In London, we had difficulty with the set, which required too much effort to move around. Having gotten the benefit of seeing it done once, I wanted to work on the script, to make it sharper and more pointed.