Theatre Repertoire 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.

My working history as an actor is definitely in the theatre; it certainly was in Australia.

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.

I never went into acting to do film. I went into it to do theatre - classical roles.

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

My father was an actor, and we have the most important theatre company in Montreal.

I do a lot of American plays. I've done a lot of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Neil Simon. I was in 'Sisters Rosensweig,' 'Six Degrees of Separation,' all of that stuff. So we're very familiar with America. I did 400 performances of 'Born Yesterday.' I did 700 performances of 'They're Playing Our Song.'

Here in America, every single actor, since they were little boys, they sing and dance and perform like angels. We don't do that. We are actors who work in a theater in very classic performances or plays.

Suddenly we saw that you could do plays about real life, and people had been doing them for some time, but they weren't always getting to the audiences. They were performed in little, tiny, theatres.

It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.

Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.

In the life of any actor or actress, there is inevitably a time when they will be eligible to act in a Tom Stoppard play. He has written a lot, and they are revived often, and there are so many characters of different ages that it was more likely I'd end up in something of his than that I wouldn't.

The first 10 years I was a professional actor, I did Shakespeare.

I came up through the theater. I came out of drama college and started working in the professional theater.

It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven't done.

The thing about making a musical is that you can and will be replaceable really quickly.

After graduating from National School of Drama, I started doing theatre in Delhi. But there was not much money in Hindi theatre.

I don't think I have had a big break, although joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 opened up new horizons.

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.

You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.

It's funny, oftentimes the really great roles that I enjoy are in classic plays, and there aren't many theatres in New York who will do them, aside from Roundabout.

I never achieved my first goal in the National Actors Theatre, which is to have a permanent Acting Company.

I loved being on stage with heroes of mine, like Gregg Edelman and Jimmy Walton, and the lovely Chita Rivera and Stephanie J. Block.

I thought theater people wouldn't see me if I hadn't trained. I didn't want to just be the Brideshead guy, to spend the rest of my life wearing waistcoats. I got the chance to try everything. Not just Romeos, but pimps and grandfathers and even one role as a woman in a Naomi Wallace play called Slaughter City.

I just wanted to be one of those actors who works at the National Theatre the whole time.