A Quote by Constantin Stanislavski

I have taken film-work that has been a little more cliché-written, to support myself and my family, and that's a whole kind of other challenge. It's like chopping wood: You've got to take what you can get and bless what withstands you. But in theatre! There's enough great theatre that you can find something interesting!
Before I worked on film, I studied the theatre, and I expected that I would spend my whole career in theatre. Gradually, I started writing for the cinema. However, I feel grateful towards the theatre. I love working with spectators, and I love this experience with the theatre, and I like theatre culture.
All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.
I don't have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there's something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.
As my passion is theatre when I do a film I'm taking time out from my theatre career. So, I'm desperate to get back into the theatre. So, I have to make sure that I put my foot down, especially with the agents and stuff, and say: "Hey no, I'm doing some theatre!" It is hard but it matters so much to me that it's just something that's going to be necessary and people will have to deal with it.
Most of the people dishing out judgment have no working experience of the theatre, have not written a professional play, a sketch, or even a joke; have never worked in a theatre, taken an acting class, or published any extended piece of work. They are creative virgins; everything they know about theatre is book-learned and second-hand.
I live for my work, apart from my family who come first. And I live to tell stories and pretend to be other people, it's something I've been doing since I was 3 years old. Maybe it's because I'm intrinsically bored with myself, and I find other people more interesting. The more different they are, the bigger the challenge.
In theatre, once you've got the character and you've got things together, you can relax into it. Film has a different feel - you don't get that through line of not stopping. Theatre is like a snowball gathering momentum and getting bigger, whereas in film, it's a bit stop and start - but you do tend to adjust to that quite easily.
'Black Watch' has taken its place in the canon of Scottish theatre, and that's fantastic. It's a very particular kind of theatre. It's about the music, the movement, the whole 'event' of it.
I went to theatre school for four years and just wanted to do theatre. I had no ambition to be on TV or to be on camera. I just wanted to go to New York or London and be on stage... I did a lot of theatre in Montreal, got involved in TV in Toronto and then moved to L.A. I hope that film and TV will take me back to theatre.
I didn't go to university. I studied theatre in high school and worked with Canberra Youth Theatre and The Street Theatre and other theatre organisations in Canberra, and that's how I got my training.
Theatre is organic, film is not. Theatre you come every day and you work with a group of people and you're are all up for it and you all get to do the whole thing every night, be it two hours or three hours. In film you work in two or three minute bits and it's never in chronological order and then someone takes that away and makes it look like it all happened, or that you gave that performance.
Theatre is relatively easy if you're British - you're living in the theatre capital of the world, London - there are so many places you can work, still. If I had begun to think of myself as a film actor, I think I would have got distracted.
Theatre is an actor's medium. An actor has little control over a film. Which is why most actors who have done theatre, and then come to films find the former more creatively satisfying.
Theatre, film and television are all modes of storytelling, and many of us are fortunate enough to move freely among them without feeling that we've 'left' or need to 'go back' to one or the other. In fact, if the theatre is to avoid a brain drain, this kind of fluidity is increasingly necessary.
I got to a point where I thought, now I have a choice. I can stay in theatre, or I can challenge myself and give this a go. And I want to challenge myself. I like to scare myself.
When I started out, I was very vociferously against theatre or what I saw theatre as being, so I tried to make my plays the opposite of that - something a bit more cinematic. I'm a film kid, so I'll never have the same love of theatre as I do of movies. It's just the way I was brought up.
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