Regional Theatre Quotes

What's the difference in opening from scratch in Philly or opening from scratch in New York? The old out-of-town tryout circuit - taking the show pre-Broadway to cities like Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Washington - has sort of been replaced with the amount of workshops we do.

I wrote 'The Room', 'The Birthday Party', and 'The Dumb Waiter' in 1957, I was acting all the time in a repertory company, doing all kinds of jobs, traveling to Bournemouth and Torquay and Birmingham.

I tried theatre. I played Miss Hannigan for a short run of Annie at a regional theatre. That was fun. I enjoyed it! I enjoy theatre and have so much respect for theatre actors.

I didn't expect to pursue acting at all, let alone TV and film, let alone New York or L.A. I was quite content doing Shakespeare out in Wisconsin.

I began modeling in N.Y. and doing commercials. That led to regional theatre and then Broadway and then movies.

Is the American theatre allowing itself to become irrelevant? The problem isn't that playwrights aren't being paid enough. It's that theatres all over America are looking towards New York to tell them what new plays to do.

In Jaipur, I did almost everything from regional theatre to Shakespeare's plays. But when I shifted to Mumbai, I joined Anupam Kher's academy, Actor Prepares, to hone my acting skills.

'Miss Saigon' was my first professional show. It was one of the first regional productions of 'Miss Saigon.'

I don't like the idea of stepping-stones in art forms: that you do your time at a regional theatre, and then you work in London and go to the West End, and then you do films. I've never felt like following that trajectory.

I know for a fact that a lot of actors are desperate and unhappy if their careers are not progressing at what they think is the correct rate. They just go crazy if they're not working. I don't feel I'd be that way. You can always get a few people together and put on a play. Maybe not in New York or L.A., but in a lot of other towns, you can.

It's incredible how London-centric the theatre world is. Certain actors won't travel away from London anymore for work; practitioners often aren't taken seriously enough unless their work is seen in London; and it's sometimes very difficult to get national critics to review shows - especially if there's a clash with a London press night.

Next time I do a play, I want to go out of town. I don't like the idea of opening in New York. I don't have to do theatre, but if you're going to do it, you should do it well. These days, everything has to be up and running in five minutes. As a result, the rehearsal time is missing.

Broadway's never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there's a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens.

Most people don't think of Los Angeles as a theatre town, and that you have to go to New York to be in theatre, and it's really not true.

Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.

The mistake people that want to be actors make is to move to New York or L.A. right away. But it's like... go act somewhere first. Be an actor. A story is a story, and an audience is an audience, no matter where you're doing it.

I always kind of dreamed locally - I never really ever dream that I would be south of the border; I dreamed about being a theatre star in Toronto, and maybe I'd do Stratford and regional stuff. I always thought it would be a slow growth.

When I was a young woman, before I moved to New York, working in small, non-Equity theatres in the Midwest, I did a lot of musicals in my early to mid-20s.