A Quote by Ayad Akhtar

If you want to really deeply touch the viewer or the reader, the theater might be the most powerful way to do it. — © Ayad Akhtar
If you want to really deeply touch the viewer or the reader, the theater might be the most powerful way to do it.
I knew where the magnets were, behind the gyprock, and the magnets were very powerful. I think they had to be powerful for me, otherwise the reader wouldn't have a reciprocal experience. But I was very careful to bury them deeply, deeply in the plaster and paint over them. I didn't want anybody to directly access them, and that's gradually changed for me.
For me, an ideal novel is a dialogue between writer and reader, both a collaborative experience and an intimate exchange of emotions and ideas. The reader just might be the most powerful tool in a writer's arsenal.
But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual's solipsism.
I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful in literature, when a reader lives the experience of the characters. So if the characters are human and real enough, then readers will feel empathy for them.
I'm an avid reader myself, and what any one reader accesses at any one time is very powerful and personal to them. Clearly you can't even begin to touch that. A novel is a singular vision, and then a myriad of readers have their own experience of that.
A good reader or viewer is a person who is alert about her newspaper or news channel. A good reader or viewer will never waste her hard-earned money in watching or reading just anything. She is serious. She will have to think if the news she is consuming is journalism or sycophancy.
You know, my problem with most screenwriting is it is a blueprint. It's like they're afraid to write the damn thing. And I'm a writer. That's what I do. I want it to be written. I want it to work on the page first and foremost. So when I'm writing the script, I'm not thinking about the viewer watching the movie. I'm thinking about the reader reading the script.
It's definitely a good way to stay in touch with your fans. The main reason I really use Instagram is because I want to hear their thoughts and what would they like to happen and see if I can make that happen. Which is a really nice way of being in touch with them all around the world.
Literature is about getting in touch. It sounds so hippie, but it really is about sharing stuff. We are a community that doesn't seem to be important for the rest of society, but we are people who want to get in touch - really in touch. We want to be thinking together.
I imagine you will always be pinched for money, for time, for a place to work. But I think you will do it. And believe me, it is not a new problem. You are in good company...Your touch is the uncommon touch; you will speak only to the thoughtful reader. And more times than once you will ask yourself whether such readers really exist at all and why you should go on projecting your words into silence like an old crazy actor playing the part of himself to an empty theater.
The only thing that I can do is hold a mirror in front of men and women, in front of the viewer in the theater, to reflect. There is nothing but reflection that I could intend to offer the viewer of the film.
Theater will cast in a more open way; Denzel Washington might play Richard III. Television and film don't really cast openly like that. The theater world has always been a leader in diversity.
It's way beyond ironic that a place called the Holy Land is the location of the fiercest, most deeply felt hatred in the world. And it makes for wonderful theater.
I want the viewer to be overwhelmed. I want the space to feel like it is caving in on the viewer and that they are forcibly entering the world of my paintings. I want there to be a feeling of overpowering decadence to the work, that is almost too much to take. I don't want them to be subtle.
At 'GQ,' there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want.
At GQ, there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want.
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