Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there’s a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more. – Vir Das
With dance and theatre, I think people get very nervous about not knowing the right things. They feel like they’ve missed something, or that they’re not bright enough to watch it. It’s not a test. – Wayne McGregor
I hate the idea of theatre just being an evening pastime. It should be emotionally and intellectually demanding. I love football. The level of analysis that you listen to on the terraces is astonishing. If people did that in the theatre… but they don’t. They expect to sit back and not participate. – Sarah Kane
I like to use my hands. When I was in theatre in college, that was one of my biggest notes: ‘You use your hands too much.’ – Susan Sullivan
The Huntington Theatre has a really fine reputation. I was keenly aware of how well thought of they are and that they develop and support new plays. – Winnie Holzman
I saw an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Fanny and Alexander’ at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. The story is just legendary for us Danes, and it was really well done. – Sidse Babett Knudsen
In America, the average playwright makes less than a receptionist in a non-profit theatre. We don’t have decent health insurance – or any health insurance at all. – Theresa Rebeck
In the theatre, because you’re all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn’t exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players. – Simon McBurney
I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people. – Viola Davis
My second husband encouraged me to go to a writing group at our local theatre. It was my ‘coming out of the closet’ moment. – Sue Townsend
I’m definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I’ve been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn’t have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it’s not going to Broadway; it’s just a different city. – Todd English
It’s all good fun – television and movies and so on – but the good thing in theatre is there’s nothing and no one between you and the audience so you can do what you want really. – Tom Conti
My mother’s side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega, was a general manager for Neil Simon shows on Broadway. – Yancy Butler
When you combine the men and women deployed from our military installations with activated reservists and members of the National Guard, Georgia is contributing more personnel to the theatre than any other State in our Union. – Sonny Perdue
I don’t like going for more than a year without doing theatre. I don’t mind falling flat on my face so long as I feel I’m open to the possibility of something extraordinary happening. – Sophie Okonedo
So you might say, ‘Why do you end up making theatre in a world in which there is already too much of that? Creating layer upon layer of artifice?’ Perhaps the function is to pierce through that cloud and show reality – so the function of art is to make things – to show: ‘Hang on, this is real.’ – Simon McBurney
Seeing the work of directors like Romeo Castellucci, Ivo van Hove, Thomas Ostermeier, and Simon McBurney and Theatre de Complicite, was, and continues to be, hugely important to me. To my mind, these are artists who are forging new languages of performance and storytelling, and their constant reinvention is very inspiring. – Sophie Hunter
A theatre is the most important sort of house in the world because that’s where people are shown what they could be if they wanted and what they’d like to be if they dared to and what they really are. – Tove Jansson
Is the American theatre allowing itself to become irrelevant? The problem isn’t that playwrights aren’t being paid enough. It’s that theatres all over America are looking towards New York to tell them what new plays to do. – Theresa Rebeck
Religion is close to theatre; much of its power comes from the effects of staging and framing. – Teju Cole
I’m into parlor dramas. I’m into theatre. I’m trained for the stage. I trained to do Chekhov and Shakespeare, I was trained for the stage. – Tom Hardy
I remember clearly watching a ‘Sooty Show’ at a theatre and telling my mum I wanted to be up with the puppets, not in the audience. – Tom Riley
My introduction to acting was through theatre, so I actually saw a couple of Broadway shows that made me want to be an actor. – Skylar Astin
I love test screenings. Some directors don’t, I know. But I love it. I think it’s because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they’re responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful. – Stephen Daldry
In 1969, I wrote a musical called ‘Mother Earth.’ It was a rock musical with an ecology theme. We did it at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California where I was a member. It was a smash hit in this small theater. – Toni Tennille