Richard Schiff Quotes

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.

I knew I wanted it to be a piece of theatre rather than just a concert.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

When it is good, theatre takes a lot of beating both to watch and perform.

Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene.

A video taped stage performance is just - you know, it's never gonna be the same as it is if you're sitting there live in the theatre.

I didn't grow up wanting to be an actor, and I didn't go to acting school.

Television is great but for me, as a performer, nothing compares to a live theatre show.

From the moment I saw 'Camelot' as a kid, the organic inclination of performing before a live audience is raw and visceral. Once you're out there, there's no yelling 'Cut!' or any such thing as a do-over because that moment has passed, and you're in it as it's happened and gone, sharing it with everyone.

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that.

Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.

I feel like doing theatre helps my on-camera work and my on-camera work kind of helps my theatre work. So I love to be able to bounce through the mediums.

I mean there’s a certain finality about a movie, when it’s done it’s done – that raised eyebrow in that moment will always be that raised eyebrow. Whereas a play only lives as a blueprint for a performance on any given night. There’s a reason you can eat popcorn and watch a movie and you can’t do that in the theatre. Theatre you have to lean in, you have to tune your ear to the stage and participateI respond to heat. And blood. And humanity. The cold experience is not for me. I’ve always enjoyed all the real people in a room together in the theatre.

I think theatre reminds us what we're doing as actors, because every night and every matinee day, you have an audience telling you what's working and what's not. And that's very good for us as actors to hone our skills.

I'll never forget my first words in the theatre. "Peanuts. Popcorn."

I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas.

I actually acted onstage before I'd ever seen a live performance, and I loved it.

It was only in the theatre that I lived

I played Tina Denmark in Ruthless the Musical when I was 9 at the Theatre on Broadway in Denver.

A good play is a play which when acted upon the boards make an audience interested and pleased. A play that fails in this is a bad play.

A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.

I grew up in music theater playing to the audience - singing and dancing and showing off. That's really my background. But the camera's different. I think I'm more at home on stage.

Theatre is so much fun because you do theatre and you have a month of working it out on your own, and then a month of rehearsal, so by the time you get to stage I know where I'm failing and I know where I'm succeeding and your boundaries are pretty concrete.

I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting. It was a lot of work - anything other than Shakespeare was less work. I had a lot of interesting roles, but I don't point to them and say, "That was more interesting than that," because I don't know what the criteria are.

As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.