Sarah Waters Quotes

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

It's really interesting working in television as opposed to the theater, where you know the arc of the character and you are able to create this whole backstory.

Of all the mediums, theatre is the one where you really need to have something to say - because it's just you, the words, and the space.

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

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor.

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

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

I think any actor would agree that you can't replace theater. It's immediate. You have the energy of the crowd and every single night it's different.

Our job is to make manifest the story, to be it. In a sense, the theatre is such a big star itself, bigger than any Shakespearean actor I could hire, that we should take the opportunity to fill it with voice and verse and movement, not interpretation.

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

If people need to be informed by lines, then there's no reason why the actor is saying the line except for information for the audience; I think there's something wrong.

You have to realize that when I started to work on 'Aladdin', Disney Theatrical wasn't in existence. I suppose I had always hoped that 'Aladdin' would be somewhere on the runway.

The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

I'd say working on television is much, much tougher than films. But television has a great connect with a live audience, which is a refreshing change for us actors.

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.

I've known since day one of working on 'Spring Awakening' - back in 1999 - that it was special.

I love writing plays because they are living, fluid things that are energised by the producer, designers, musicians, actors and audience.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

Live theatre provides a rush you can't get in film or television. But it is the TV and film work that offers the leisure to go off and do a play.

I've done so much theater, and yet I never had an experience like 'The Normal Heart.' We could feel the reaction of the audience every night. It was visceral.

I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.

Theatre's a much less faddish, more sensible world than TV or film.

With a play, there's more of a definable arc because of the nature of theater: You know, there's no editing, so there's something more natural about the arc a character follows in a play. I think theater is more an actor's medium, whereas film is more a director's medium, because that's who controls the final feel of the film.

The great lesson in theatre is that you live the story every night, and that is a wonderful vehicle for getting to the richest places in a performance or investing a character with the richest life.