Kevin Spacey Quotes

Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces.

Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15.

I was pretty new to the Broadway world once I began working in it. I hadn't really grown up being too aware of that many shows or that many actors in shows. I was always obsessed with Judy Garland, though.

I guess the big thing to say about 'Pig Farm' is that none of us knows if it works, and we're going in blind. It's in the tradition of 'Urinetown,' kind of - but that's a pretty small tradition. It's possible that it can fail.

Tom Stoppard, the English-speaking world's brainiest playwright, thinks that British audiences have grown too dumb to understand his plays.

From that time through the time I was a New Dramatist, when I was something like twenty-two, I saw absolutely everything in New York. Absolutely everything.

There are so many remarkable playwrights working right now, that I see everything I can. Annie Baker is a genius, I'll see anything she writes. The same for Lynn Nottage, Cynthia Hopkins, and Lisa D'Amour. Anything they've got going on, I'll go see.

My plays aren't stylistically the same. Just being an African-American woman playwright on Broadway is experimental.

I went to New York University to study experimental theatre in 2006 and was there pretty consistently until 2011.

I see a ton of theatre whenever I'm not working to stay inspired. I love feeling like I'm a part of the theatre community and following the work of actors and writers I admire. I'm a big reader, too.

In Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think about its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding.

I did an A Level in Theatre Studies and had a really inspirational teacher, and then I just went on to university.

On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre.

If the film is a hit then everyone shares the success. If it is going to be a disaster then it might as well be because of me, not because of somebody else.

We didn't have a lot of live theater in Oklahoma. I didn't visit New York when I was growing up. I watched movie musicals, and I believed in an idealistic, idyllic version of Broadway.

I'd seen the current stage production and the 1975 production of Chicago. I liked them both very much, but I didn't use them necessarily as inspiration.

If these theatres didn't exist, the tradition of British theatre would cease to exist.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

We don't really need reviewers, just first-night reporters who will tell us faithfully whether or not the audience liked the show.

At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion?

Some years ago, I was invited to speak in Houston, Texas. They said I was a founder of 'postmodern theatre'. So I said to my office, 'This is ridiculous for me to go and speak about postmodern theatre when I don't know what it means, but... they're paying me a lot of money, so I'll go.'

Let us understand each other. I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found, whose policy has been attack and not defense.... Meantime, I desire you to dismiss from your minds certain phrases, which I am sorry to find so much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of ‘taking strong positions and holding them,’ of ‘lines of retreat,’ and of ‘bases of supplies.’ Let us discard such ideas.... Let us study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves. Let us look before us, and not behind. Success and glory are in the advance, disaster and shame lurk in the rear.

The critics didn't like it at all. They felt it was crude and violent without meaning, and they dumped on it. 'Point Blank' marked a shift in movie-making, and they weren't ready for it. However, I think those were the last negative words ever said about it.

It's interesting that the wondrous 'Hamilton,' which I could not be more ecstatic about, has taken a long time to perfect to bring it to Broadway. And it wouldn't have been possible if it was developed in the commercial theatre from the get-go.

It was 1976, and I was acting off-Broadway with a pair of Canadians: Victor Garber and Gale Garnett. The play was called 'Cracks,' and Martin Sherman, the man who wrote it, went on a few years later to have a giant hit with 'Bent.' But not this time around. Opening night was a disaster.