Theatre Management Quotes

Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time.

I am essentially someone who comes from the theatre. I love the theatre. Unfortunately, theatre doesn't pay the bills. Only in theatre abroad, I get a wage.

My childhood dream was always to be on Broadway. I wanted to end up in TV and film. It's kind of flipped, and I'm not mad about it, but my childhood dream is Broadway and I want to end up there.

I'm not a musical theatre person, and I never will be, especially after seeing the way it operates. It's so incredibly inefficient. It takes three weeks to effect a change. It can be a lighting change, a script change, a musical change - you have to meet with six different departments, and about a month later, it may happen.

In 1993, I was working at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

Theater is very much the world I'd like to get back to, particularly in New York, both as an actor and director.

When we'd suggested doing it, the Theatre Royal management had said, 'Nobody wants to see Waiting for Godot.' As it happened, every single ticket was booked for every single performance, and this confirmation that our judgment was right was sweet. Audiences came to us from all over the world. It was amazing.

I don't think a professional agent or theatre manager would say my career had gone as well as perhaps it should have after that first 'Oliver!' success, but then again I was never really intending to have a career in the professional theatre in the first place.

My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.

I would have started the National Actors Theatre 30 years earlier.

So I majored in Drama, did all the plays that were possible to do, skated through school in order to be in every production on stage or backstage in whatever capacity and I came to New York looking for work in the summers.

I'm wary of artistic directors who say, 'Here is my vision', because it's empirical. Basically it's about who you work with and what plays you put on; the vision comes out of that.

I'm not saying that theatre is a doomed profession, but if a person wants to stay in it very long, they'd better develop theatre skills beyond just acting.

Theatres that are stuffed to the gunnels leave me feeling rather peaceful - that's when things are going right. When you're playing to 40% and trying to make the budget, it's more difficult.

Directing was a great experience, but it's terrifying to have the responsibility of carving up the other actors' performances.

So I told my mum that I'd opened a theatre. She said, "Are you having me on?" I said, "Well I'll give you an audition, but I'm not promising you anything."

I had a teacher who loved movies. He had a little theatre called The Flick, and he would let a bunch of us volunteer to work there, and he also let us make little movies in class.

I really do not see why there is not a splendid field for good work on the music hall stage, and if I did not have my own theatre taking up my time, I should rather like to go into it.

My grandparents - both of my mother's parents - were actors, and they ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company, through the town of Reading, where I come from.

I started backstage, making the tea, looking after the actors, doing stage management for two years.

I did theater at Carnegie, and in Pittsburgh and New York.

The records - what little we know about Shakespeare, including the records of the plays in his playhouse - were often the story of how quickly they came off if they didn't work. They had to move on. They were absolutely led by box office.

I got a job right out of drama school as assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic. I've been lucky enough to stay in work ever since.

I'd like to work at the Royal Court Theatre, please.

In the whole course of our work at the theatre we have been, I may say, drenched with advice by friendly people who for years gave us the reasons why we did not succeed... All their advice, or at least some of it, might have been good if we had wanted to make money, to make a common place of amusement.