William Congreve is the only sophisticated playwright England has produced; and like Shaw, Sheridan, and Wilde, his nearest rivals, he was brought up in Ireland.
We grew up on Harold Pinter, Sam Shepard, Samuel Beckett. You're making something about men on the verge of a nervous breakdown, you're going to look to those guys.
It's often assumed that British actors read Shakespeare and sonnets as we're going to bed at night and we're all very familiar with it.
It breaks my heart to hear of our theatres struggling to survive. As well as playing a vital role in community life, they're guardians of our heritage and should be cherished.
Ahmedabad is a cultured city with a rich heritage of craft and theatre.
I come from a family of actors. My grandfather was like a Laurence Olivier with the Comedie Francaise. Since I was four I went every week to the Comedie Francaise. My aunt and grandmother were there, but my grandfather was a big star.
We talk about theatre museums filled with old costumes and things. What we also need is a theatre museum of the old routines on videotape. We are only the custodians of those techniques, and they should be preserved.
If you play a part that's been done before, on stage for instance, you feel like you're carrying a torch and staggering under the weight of it for a bit and then passing it on to somebody else.
What I want is an international monument to the world's greatest playwright. It would be an attraction that would be both educational and an automatic sight for tourists, like St Paul's and the Tower of London. It would be built with honesty and integrity not another Disneyland, but as nearly as possible a replica of the original Globe Theatre.
We had our British background of traditional theatre behind us.
My theatrical background was in the great work of the South African playwright Athol Fugard.
