Theatrical Direction Quotes

I'm still trying to write. I wrote a play a few years ago, so I'm trying to start writing again. The play was called The Commons Of Pensacola. It was at MTC [Manhattan Theatre Club] with Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner. It was kind of like a riff on Ruth Madoff.

I've taken [acting] class with Larry Moss, who's more kind of in the theater world, so he's really educated me about playwrights.

In general, the few directors that I've worked with that I really respect have taught me a lot about who I am and they've opened me up as an actor. I want to take some of that to apply it to when I'm directing actors.

Don't worry about telling your actor what to do.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director's task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over. And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.

Plays have to be made, and we have to find a way to make them. All of us.

I think my ultimate directorial style is 'play.' In reference to theater, it's called a play - I believe in that noun, and the verb that goes with it.

If I'm not directing it, I need to be right in the director's ear so we can be talking about this." You do something like use the wrong music, the tone's off, and everything feels off". And I was like, "I'm not going down with this one. I wrote it, but I don't like that play." Then I thought, "Well, no one's producing my stuff, letting me star in it, and direct it at these theaters, so I'll just do them in comedy clubs."

I like to create an atmosphere where actors feel safe enough to take risks.

Acting is like playing, while directing is really fun, sort of like an orgy.

From my earliest days as an actress, I had always been drawn to learning the director's job.

When Orson Welles was acting in 'Compulsion,' the director Richard Fleischer let him just take over and direct the courtroom scenes. To be able to see Welles - who knew more about directing than anyone - direct himself and the other actors, it was unbelievable and unforgettable.

I sort of dreamed about directing before my career as an actor took off. I've directed stage before in so many capacities on tours. I put that together. You have to. Otherwise, it's your statement. It's your voice, and that has to come through.

Dr. Birdsell, my dramatic coach in school, always said that I was the most melancholy Dane that he had ever directed.

I think that for a lot of actors - especially American actors - to get line readings and to be told and have your director literally act out the part for you is sort of discouraging in a way. It's a very Eastern European thing to do - a lot of directors that I worked with in Russia did that as well. And, I never took that as an insult, as many actors tend to do. To me, I think it's just offering a certain energy - offering their flavor - and, instead of trying to sort of decode and communicate it to you, they just show you their flavor of what it should be.

I work with intuition. With interpreters. I have my own method. I know exactly what I want from actors. Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear.

And Paul Moravec, not being a theater person, would always trust me when I said things that I am like, "you're going to need another 10 seconds of music year to get them across the stage." But I always knew that the people were going to be coming to hear his music of which my words are going to be a part. It was clear that he wanted to go and direction A., and I wanted to go and direction B. We would've gone and direction A. That's the most important piece of advice I can give to anybody who finds themselves in an opera, or musical comedy situation like that.

A film is the director's medium. The theater is an actor's.

My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.

Polly Findlay showed real insight and imagination in her production of my translation of Seneca's Thyestes at the Arcola. I enjoyed her use of the space and the detail of her work with the actors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with Light Shining.

Any director who comes into a revival owes a great deal to the original director. If I know the backbone works, it gives me, as a director, much more freedom to bring something new to it or try something different.

Directing was a transformative experience for me, one that I really enjoyed.

Actors are like kids, they need to play a little bit. And that's the nature of their job, they need to shake off some energy and then you as the director get them back on track. When you do loosen up the reins, you get some amazing things, but you have to wring out the performances for every last good drop.

A film director is not a creator, but a midwife. His business is to deliver the actor of a child that he did not know he had inside him.

I never sat down and wrote, but what I do is kind of act as a dramaturge for the piece. I am sitting with the writers. I'm discussing ideas with the writers and concepts. We're debating and having a dialectic where we are taking a lot of different ideas and trying to synthesize them into the right idea. I'm very much a part of that process. That's my job as the director.