Ron Perlman Quotes

I'm a firm believer in the idea that theater excels over film and TV in its ability to let people play with poetry.

Theater is so wonderful and brilliant but it lasts very much in the moment. It's there and then it's gone.

The great thing about theater is the doing it again and again and again.

The Color Purple received four Tony nominations; the play is highly looked at and it's a must see for everyone. I just want to carry on what Jennifer Hudson has done and help the team get to the finish line.

I grew up going to the theater. That was one of the nice things my mom did was she took us to plays and symphony concerts and to the museums. Theater captured my imagination. I just loved the idea of that box, which is essentially what a stage is from a certain distance, a box with all this life going on in it. So, I was eleven when I wrote my first play. Of course, it was horrible.

To play Cleopatra on Broadway would just be incredible.

I got to see Linda's [Hart] live when it first came on Broadway. I just loved her. I've always been a fan of hers.

I would love to do Shakespeare in New York.

The wonderful thing about Food for Thought is that it lets you keep your hand in theater and be in front of a live audience without a commitment of six months, or even three months.

There is really nothing like doing a play in New York.

Once I had started film, I suddenly said, 'Wow, I love it.' I moved there from New York. But I've always gone back to the theater, and it is more satisfying, really, because you get to give a continuous performance - no sequels.

The first thing is to accept that theater is an unknown. If you go to a concert, you know the music. If you go to an art show, you can literally see the art on your phone before you see it in person. But with theater, often times people aren't prepared to take risks, even though that's exactly what's great about it.

At the moment, my trajectory isn't to think about acting. I'm absolutely devoted to The Imaginarium, our projects and directing. And watching and enabling other actors do their thing in our studio is hugely rewarding. I expect at some point I'll probably want to go back on stage and do some theater, because I've not done theater in 10 years.

The excitement of theatre is palpable but the frustrations, and the complete absence of a definitive evening - the play as text means practically nothing in a way - , there's no particular performance that is definitive in the way a novel is a solid object you hold in your hands and here it is. You can't say that about a play. If the novel gives us a sense of throbbing consciousness, theater is pure soul, beautiful and elusive.

I learnt a lot from my Broadway experience, it was one of the most challenging things I will probably ever have to do in my entire life, because it was eight shows a week - live singing with really hard choreography - and the spontaneity, you don't know what's going to happen.

Musicals are good times. I live to do a musical, there's nothing like it, no experience like that in the movie business. You don't get to pull all those triggers at the same time doing anything else. Nothing pulls that from you. Dancing, acting and singing is like "Alright, I gotta fire on all cylinders right now" because that's what it requires. It's fun getting to exercise all those muscles.

The only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted.

There was something so best-musical-ever when people screamed and begged for mercy, and she could listen to a good musical all day.

In the theater you rehearse for a minimum of five to six weeks. And then you get to play it. Which means you get to get better. That's the great thing about the theater.

The theater's a live thing, and film is, to some extent, a discipline where you're putting everything together and trying to execute something exactly. You do it away from people and then you present it at the end.

I'm one of those pathetic actors who will say yes to every play reading just because I do miss the stage so much. What I really miss about the theater is that in the end, it's yours to give. In television and film, it's yours to do and someone else's to take and someone else's to give. As much as I love television - the biggest luxury of all is to know that you have a job to go to - I do miss that connection and having that power over my own performance on stage.

The only thing I won't do is theater.

I love orchestrating music and conducting and being on Broadway.

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

The true theater, because it moves and makes use of living instruments, continues to stir up shadows where life has never ceased to grope its way.