Focus on the play like it has a history and a life of its own.
Theater is a very changeable art. It responds to the moment in history the way the newspaper does, and there's no predicting what to come up with next.
I've redone plays of mine and made changes. A play is a living thing, and I'd never say I wouldn't rewrite years later. Tennessee Williams did that all the time, and it's distressing, because I'd like the play to be out there in its finished form.
Hopefully I've gotten better as an actor as the years have gone on, but the type of work I want to do has never changed.
All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers... Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about... Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion.
I would just like to say that opera is no longer about fat people in breastplates shattering wine glasses.
Marlon Brando changed everything for actors. After him, everyone wanted to be Marlon. No one wanted to be a type: they all wanted to display versatility in every role.
I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.
As an actress, I think it's important to look back and realize that we aren't always quite as original as we think we are. There's this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.
There's no American playwright after 1945 who wasn't profoundly affected - who didn't have their DNA changed by Tennessee Williams.
If there's ever going to be a challenge for an actor, it's that character who's often evolving - which is not often the case in television.
I started to study, because I knew I had to learn a lot about myself as an actor; you can't act the same as you did as a child.
I just love the history of acting. It's such a beautiful craft and you absolutely get out of it what you put into it.
'School for Wives' is Moliere's first step toward grand comedy, but he still has one foot in commedia.
Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it...
