A Quote by Keith Johnstone
I left my theatre the Loose Moose almost twenty years ago, and I hardly ever go back. Sometimes I go back to do a Mask class. They're doing more of this than I was doing when I left. Often it's the same improvisers but they're older. And now, they don't care if the theatre's full or not.
Related Quotes
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 have seen Hollywood artistes like Al Pacino, Tom Cruise and Tim Burton doing theatre and Broadway shows. Cinema actors tend to go back to theatre because it gives them an opportunity to reinvent themselves.
I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.
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.
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.
Live theatre is great. I loved doing the League live because you get that element of spontaneity, but then when I'm doing live I start to crave the precision of filming. It's a different discipline; it's like a scalpel and you're very precise suddenly. It's scary as well because you think this is it, this is my one go at making it if I can the best it can be, because this is how it's going to be remembered and rendered and left on this film indelibly. And people are going to look back on this and that's that.
When I'm doing theatre, I feel like my life's on hold. Even though you might go out for a coffee, or go and see a film, your brain is still there, pulling you back to it.
I'm doing The Physicists, which is great, and I do have my agent to thank for that because a lot of agents try and talk you out of doing theatre. They don't push theatre because you can make more money doing television, whereas theatre wages are pretty shocking. But it's something I've always been keen to do and have been encouraged to do so, which is nice.
It was sort of in the jam-band era and it was at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester [New York], right where I grew up. I actually went back there a couple years ago when I was on tour for Kroll Show. I performed at that theater, which was really cool to go back to the first place I'd gone to a concert.
Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play.
I think the future for young chefs is much brighter than it was 40 years ago. Because people have become so much more interested in food. That will not stop. We cannot go back now. We cannot go back to frozen.
The Sixties - I had to have my foot in everything then. I'm doing the same thing now but through an intermediary. You know. The food company. Maybe that's the way to go about it. You go right straight into the inferno, and when you get older, you pull back.
When I first started in the business, it was hardly ever done. But today, it almost feels like studios go out and preview movies knowing full well that they're going to use the information they get to go back and reshoot.
Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn't for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.
I pretty much got into theatre to do community theatre and things, but then I went to Williamstown and found an agent. I then went to New York and did a lot of theatre there, so I started doing only theatre.
Some years ago, I was invited to speak in Houston, Texas. They said I was a founder of 'postmodern theatre'. So I said to my office, 'This is ridiculous for me to go and speak about postmodern theatre when I don't know what it means, but... they're paying me a lot of money, so I'll go.'
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