Theater Commitment Quotes

When I left Cambridge, I applied to regional repertory theaters in the U.K. and got accepted by one of them... And here I am, still at it.

It's highly dishonorable to ever quit a production. I never have done it, and I can't imagine ever doing it. However, I have been in productions before where, on the first in the read-through, you feel that someone is in trouble, and indeed, actors have been let go shortly after read-throughs. I've seen that happen before.

I've just taken the decision that I'm going to now go full time back into the theater.

You have to take a huge loss financially to do a play. You have to put aside the commercials and the speeches and the other things that put money on the table, and really save up to do it. And that's what I've done here. But it's worth it to me to be in a really good play.

I would hate not to do a play every couple of years. I think it's not me.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

Theater, because of the commitment, it has to be a great role and a great play to me. It takes a lot out of you.

It's not that I'm sick of the theater, don't get me wrong. I'm just tired of the commitment.

Certainly, I seem to need to do a play a year. I feel wrong if I haven't got one planned.

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".

Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy.

The show can go on without me, and probably will, but I want to come back to act in Chicago. My wife and I just bought a condo downtown, and I want to do theater.

I've been an actor for 30 years. I'm not going to run from a great theater production to do two days on an HBO series or something.

The theater commitment is hard, especially in conjunction with a television commitment. That's a big, long commitment.

I feel that if you're going to do theater, you've really got to throw yourself into the deep end. You have to commit your whole life and soul to it to make it the best it could ever be because theater can truly change people in lots of different ways. But I also think it can bore people to death, and it's quite a fine line between those two things.

I promise myself that I would go and do a play every year.

I was already committed to a play back in New York about Hans Christian Andersen, where Colleen Dewhurst was going to play my mother. I was excited about that, and I got this script called 'Back to the Future,' and I thumbed through it. Didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention.

I love to work anywhere, but because there is so much attention after 'The Square' my three agents wanted me to quit the play when I did it. I refused as I thought it was an interesting and brilliant play, and I didn't just want to run straight off to Hollywood.

I have to be invested spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically to do theater. I can't do it to make a living. I have four kids, a couple of grandkids, and two mortgages.

I was invited to a couple of races, but I was doing a play in New York.

There's been times I've thought, 'I don't want to be an actress forever,' and there are times when I feel I can't live without it because I love it so much.

I was working in theater, so I didn't get to go to my prom.

I don't feel like I need a break from the theater, ever.

Plays are a pretty big commitment. It takes a minimum of three months out of your life, really. And if you have family or kids, then at least during the rehearsal period for five or six weeks, you kind of say goodbye to everybody.