theatrical challenges Quotes

I'm sure with a production that's not particularly well received or mediocrely received, it must be incredibly challenging to get up and keep doing it.

In my heart of hearts, I love theatre. It's the joy and terror of putting a play on, the creativity of it. It is infinitely harder than film and television and more tiring. Your performance is heightened in the way it isn't with film.

I've had the experience of seeing what makes life easier for an actor and for the crew, and what makes it feel bogged down and challenging. We're all really fortunate that we get to make our living as artists.

Acting is a challenge at times. I mean, when you have scenes where you're jumping into a mascot bear to travel back in time, and you try to make that seem real. For me, I'm a person that has a pretty wild imagination, just kind of letting that run wild and sort of just doing the best you can to not feel stupid.

I have a great deal of respect for the craft, I don't know how much respect it has for me. But it's a precision process. Doing it on stage would be, I think, terrifying. Doing it on film has its own difficulties, because film is not conducive to spontaneity. You might have a run through and get a few chuckles at eight o'clock in the morning, but you don't keep laughing at the same thing all day long.

My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.

I enjoy them both [singing and acting] a great deal. I have a passion for both. Maybe acting just a little bit more because it's more of a challenge for me, while music comes so easily.

I play characters who are comfortable naked, but that's something you work up to. I did a play off-Broadway in New York when I was in college. It was full-frontal nudity. It's nerve-racking.

The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted.... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do.

Trying to execute that kind of intricate staging in the West Wing at the same time you're doing intricate dialogue - it's like patting your head and rubbing your stomach!

Part of the joy I'm discovering in acting is the fact that it's uncomfortable to me, that it's challenging, and the possibilities of always being able to improve on something, of always being able to try something new, it's intriguing and exciting.

Take a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical The Book of Mormon. Now imagine the security precautions that would be required to stage a similar production about Islam. The project is unimaginable—not only in Beirut, Baghdad, or Jerusalem, but in New York City.

I'm an actor and I am looking for roles where I can continue to evolve, and things that are challenging. I gravitate to the roles, not necessarily television or film. It's just the fact that, for me, the most interesting roles have been in television.

For the record, if you're not a stage actor, climbing onto Broadway and tackling something like David Mamet is not an easy thing to do.

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film - you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Being a producer and a star of the play was a lot more challenging and difficult than I ever anticipated, but so rewarding. I got to be involved with the writing, the casting.

I think because my brother was an actor and I just saw how he struggled through, I guess I'm sensitive to it.

The fact is that 'The Wizard Of Oz' has never really worked in the theatre. The film has one or two holes where, in the theatre, you need a song. For example, there's nothing for either of the two witches to sing.

I buried myself so much in the classics that I felt, "Well now, I've played all the big parts, whether badly or goodly, I don't give a damn, but at least I've played them all. Now, let's start again. Let's start the whole career again." And it makes you feel like you're beginning again, it really does.

Everything that you do is a challenge. And acting is just building up your concentration and being able to listen and to do the ridiculous.

It's tricky playing people that you don't like and finding a way to empathise with them. It's challenging and very exciting for an actor.

Obviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal.

It's one of the oldest theatrical adages: never work with children or animals.

One of the first roles I had on stage was with a brilliant director in a brilliant play with a brilliant cast, but I just couldn't find my way into the heart of the character. I found myself straining a lot. When it started. I felt lost. That was the Eugène Ionesco play Rhinoceros. I don't think I was prepared for that. I don't think I had the full tool kit to do it justice. It's a very difficult play, it's an extraordinarily difficult part, and I never felt I really got it right. Far from it. To a degree, Hamlet was the same.