Theatre Inspiration Quotes

When I saw Paul Scofield do 'Love's Labor's Lost at Stratford,' that's when I saw the potential of the level of truth that could go on up there on a stage. I said, 'This is what I want to do.'

I grew up seeing a lot of theatre, and it was theatre that really seduced me into acting - not film or television.

I went to anything that was on at the Lyceum in Edinburgh. I was quite geeky. There was a production of 'Look Back in Anger' with David Tennant and Kelly Reilly in it, and it blew me away. I still think about it and look back on it as the moment where I decided, 'I want to do that.'

You have to capitalise on any success you have and keep doing what you do as well as you can. But how do you define success? In my book, it's to be playing those parts you saw your idols - Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave - playing when they were the age you are now.

I've always looked to that play, 'Virginia Woolf,' for a cue - as far as any cue I might need as an actor for inspiration or as a writer.

It meant the world to see kids excited about theatre. That's the great thing about 'Hamilton' for me is to see young people who wouldn't normally think theatre is cool being really excited about how it works and getting involved.

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National, and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw, but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

I really hope for more Broadway. I didn't think I was going to love it this much. I would love to stay here.

Shakespeare was the thing that started me off on that train, you know, and every one of his plays. There are so many different characters, and the wonderful thing about being in an all-girls school was I got to play them all, you know. So I got to play Mercutio and Oberon and Malvolio - it was great.

I remember seeing 'A Moon for the Misbegotten' with Colleen Dewhurst, and that made a really big impression on me, and I remember wanting to be like her and I still want to be like Colleen Dewhurst! My mom took me to a lot of theatre growing up, and I also remember seeing Pippin and being like, 'Wow!

That was the bat signal for me - 'Rent' changed my life. It took me years before I got beyond that show.

My own journey as a writer has been the discovery of different theatrical voices. Chekhov was a revelation. Tennessee Williams was another one. We read 'The Glass Menagerie' in high school, and I still remember the cover.

If you look at the muscularity of something like 'Wicked' and the way it has just spawned sort of generations of young people wanting to get involved in the theatre - it's brilliant.

I had done some acting at school, but I wasn't particularly good at it. What inspired me was going to the Old Vic in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the National Theatre was based there.

Then I saw Keanu Reeves in 'Much Ado About Nothing' and I know if he can do it, I can do it too.

Cornelia Parker has inspired a lot of my theatre work. Her art is about points of impact: it's poetic but with a strong literal story.

I saw my sister in this production of 'Whistle Down the Wind' - my sister was a really big theater kid - and when I saw her do that, I was so obsessed. Those were like my first words; I was singing along to the songs. From that point on, I did theater, and then I got into acting in film and television.