I am grateful to theatre for making me what I am today. But it's not like theatre is my first love. I am equally attached to cinema, which is, actually, a child of theatre, since it borrows heavily from it.
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.
I don't want my work to be heavy. The challenge is to make it interesting and engaging, keeping in mind the need for method acting. This is what I have learnt from Bharat Muni's 'Natya Shastra' and from the Russian theatre legend Stanislavsky.
My interest in theater really began in the '70s when American realism wasn't really in favor. I really dreaded going into a play that had a toaster that worked. I just didn't want to see that.
The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.
My exposure to Beckett and to late O'Neill was probably important right at the time I gave up poetry and the novel.
I loved traditional musical comedy. That was my passion. Then 'Spring Awakening' happened, and it took that rock n' roll and pop music to change gears for me.
I'm always keeping an eye out for a period piece. I was trained in theatre, so most of the things we did were classical - Shakespeare, Moliere, and Chekhov.
The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.
You do develop a taste as an actress: Chekhov, Ayckbourn: it's the combination of comedy and human drama. I would never want to do anything without comedy.
Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.
I saw a production of 'Titus Andronicus' at the Royal Shakespeare Company with Brian Cox back in 1987. That sort of rocked my world. It was a remarkable production in its simplicity and its realism and passion.
