Neil Burger Quotes

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

Audiences are very willing to be taken somewhere, and to ask an audience beforehand what it wants is probably, I think, a mistake. Much better you should tell them what you want and hope they agree with it.

I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both.

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.

There's a romance and power to live theater.

I love the power of theater. I think it's an experience you never forget.

Compared to film or television, theater is more interactive, collaborative.

Theatre, for me, is about providing to the audience a new and exciting experience.

I suppose that I'm excited by exciting theater. It takes a risk to show us the world in a new way.

Theater is an amazing outlet.

As an artist, I think it's critical for keeping yourself alive that you try to get your hands into something a little bit more intensely. It's one of the reasons why I love theater because you never actually let go of it and it never feels like there's a tremendous distance between the process and the product.

I like the idea of conceiving a show and putting on a show, and especially when I got to the place where I could play theaters.

By attracting attention to yourself, you distract people from the movie. Ideally, you like a movie to speak for itself. You don't describe a song before you sing it or tell about a painting before you show it. You don't reveal the recipe before you serve the dish. You taste it.

Live performances always feel like such a moment with all of the costumes and theatrics.

I was always into film, but theater was my entry point. I always felt like film didn't make sense to me as a kid. It was just so magical that I was like, 'There's something going on back there that I don't know.' But, when I watched theater, it was something that was happening in front of me.

I'm interested in putting something on stage that will have a very wide appeal without being condescending; that will reach an audience and make it part of the dance; that will get everybody in the theater.

I love Janet Jackson and her creative set design.

I think it's really important to show new styles of song and music. I think that's what people want to see and hear from me.

Theatre is a very beautiful and interesting medium because it's a live show, unlike a film - once released, it's gone.

Any actor worth his salt is looking for truth, the core of truth of the particular situation he is portraying, of that play. The playwright, the actors and the audience, that's what we're all there seeking. When it's working, time is destroyed. Sometimes 'Moon,' a play of four hours, would go by in a snap of the fingers.

Theatre has a strong connect with the audience and gratifies me as an actor, but the canvas of films is huge!

For us, our stage is always what it is. It's not about reaching the broadest audience as it's about doing quality work.

Theatre polished me as an artist.

A film carries six fine arts - it consists of architecture, painting, music, writing or literature, photography and performance. It's a conjecture of all these things and yet based on literature.

Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that's its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.