Stephen Karam Quotes

Look at the shows that are really successful on Broadway. They're musicals. They're things that a woman will pick out the tickets for, or a man will buy the tickets with a woman in mind. It's a date. It's boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife. That's what the theater in New York has become.

You don't choose who you sit next to in a theater. You sit in a theater, and there's an energy that happens.

The great thing about doing a play is you get this rehearsal period, which you don't get with most film and television roles.

I don't like to compare coaches.

When I began to direct, I discovered that I was much more comfortable than I was acting.

I have to have sound in my ears for 10 minutes prior. I come to the theater early, two hours, just to calm down and warm up.

If it's a 50-seat theater, I am neurotic about whether I'm doing an honest performance. Sometimes I walk away happy enough with it. You know, it can always be better, but sometimes I'll walk away distraught, feeling like I missed the pulse of the character that evening.

If I like what I am doing, the TRP games doesn't bother me.

'Rent' audiences tend to be pretty vocal. They scream and cheer a lot.

My style of cinema is different and I always look at my films as the audience would.

When I go into a theater, I'm very excited to turn off my phone. But then, of course, I get anxiety.

My first assignment was a curtain-puller for 'The Curious Savage.'

It may take a while, but I think 'On the Town' has the potential for us to break down the boundaries between the traditional theatergoer who may have fond memories of the musical and those with a 'Broadway-is-not-for-me' agenda.

I did theater summer camps when I was a kid, and I enjoyed them, but they never felt quite right. But then there would always be a tiny improv workshop towards the end of camp, and I would always feel like I liked it so much better.

My first role was on Broadway from 1963-64 in Chips With Everything.' It was very well reviewed but not very well attended.

I don't like to compare players, particularly to myself.

I feel that 'Saudagar' was the best debut for me. I wouldn't want it any other way.

The shields were enormous. In 'Julius Caesar,' I died early in the scene and used to fall asleep under the shield until I was woken up by applause.

I regret to say that during the first act of this, I fell so soundly asleep that the gentleman who brought me piled up a barricade of overcoat, hat, stick, and gloves between us to establish a separation in the eyes of the world, and went into an impersonation of A Young Man Who Has Come to the Theater Unaccompanied.

A good many inconveniences attend playgoing in any large city, but the greatest of them is usually the play itself.

I did so much theater, where everybody I worked with was so much better than me, that I just sort of learned.

I've always said I prefer theater, but there's only ever been one play that I really loved doing, and that was The Seagull.

The most reliable pleasure afforded by theater is the intermission.

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first.

Watching first nights, though I've seen quite a few by now, is never any better. It's a nerve-racking experience. It's not a question of whether the play goes well or badly. It's not the audience reaction, it's my reaction. I'm rather hostile toward audiences—I don't much care for large bodies of people collected together. Everyone knows that audiences vary enormously; it's a mistake to care too much about them. The thing one should be concerned with is whether the performance has expressed what one set out to express in writing the play. It sometimes does.