Top 1200 Theatre Directors Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Television can become a bit of a treadmill for directors. You come in, nobody knows you, the actors are already doing what they're doing, and you're just one of a number of directors who comes in.

When I was in college, my graduation thesis was called 'Female Directors.' I interviewed all of the important female directors from Mexico. There were four. That was it.

The thing I love about working with first-time directors is that it's always quite shocking how little difference there is between them and directors who've been directing all their lives.

I realized after my first play that no one was going to offer me roles for theatre. So I started my own theatre company even though I was in deep debt in 1988.

'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 tell stories through dance, and I think that's why I'm so attracted to the theatre because even the choreography in theatre moves the plot forward at all times.

I love theatre because that is my foundation. So, if I had to make a choice in terms of where I get the most fulfillments, it would be theatre. The reaction is so immediate, unlike with TV and film.

I think the three Mexican directors - Alejandro Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro - gave all of us foreign, and particularly Latino, directors a big break.

My biggest advice for women writer/directors is to always be attempting to make work that avoids pandering to the conceptions that the industry has put in place for "women directors."

I suppose what's so amazing about working at the National Theatre is that, because it's a subsidized theatre, you're not trying to create a product that's going to have a mass market in order to make the money back.

I did spend about 5 years in the Griffin Theatre Company in 1978 actually , and worked therefore about 5 years on a voluntary basis. This was very much as a amateur, doing things like mopping the floor, handling props, setting up scenery, etc. I never acted, and don't think I'm an actor, but those years in the theatre taught me a lot about professional theatre.

I thought that Hollywood was just for geniuses and that directors come from three generations of directors. I was worried that I was not up to the challenge of making a movie. Then realized that all a director has to do is know what he wants to do.

I think the kind of togetherness and understanding between music directors and singers, and between producers and directors, is not the same anymore. Now, it's all too professional.

I don't see a future for Broadway-style theatre in India. We already have Hindi cinema, but small, intimate theatre will survive as long as people feel the need to talk to each other.

You work with great directors and terrible directors, and so you learn; you take what you think will work for you.

I have been involved with theatre since I was 13. I never seriously thought I would get into movies though I had every intention of continuing with theatre.

I'd worked with directors who wouldn't collaborate. Then I've also worked with directors who didn't really know what they wanted. I knew I didn't want to be either one of those guys - or girls.

In 1973, 'Sizwe Banzi is Dead' and 'The Island,' which I co-wrote with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona, transferred from The Royal Court Theatre to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End.

As an actor, particularly in theatre, you're trying to get jobs on TV; but you're also losing jobs in theatre to people who are on television.

Being an actor in TV or movies is different. A film or TV actor, if put in theatre, won't know certain dimensions, while a theatre actor won't know certain things when he comes before the camera. So I think a film actor can learn emoting from this theatre counterpart, while the theatre actor can learn about camera techniques from the film actor.

I wound up graduating from the Los Angeles County School for the Arts as a theatre major and then was honored to be accepted into Carnegie Mellon's Musical Theatre program.

I need theatre for my equilibrium because in theatre, the actors don't care so much about image, about celebrity; you are more independent.

What if lawmakers never spoke to their constituents? Oddly enough, that's exactly how corporate America operates. Shareholders vote for directors, but the directors rarely, if ever, communicate with them.

I've lived on my own since 17, and when I found I wasn't working all the time, I ended up starting a small theatre company called Red One Theatre.

It's entirely to do with personality, I think. There are good directors who talk a lot, bad directors who talk a lot, and good directors who don't say much and vice-versa. It just depends on whether people respond to that personality and whether people have a willingness to do something for them.

I graduated college, my degree is in theatre, so I went to Chicago and tried to get into the theatre scene up there, but it was real hard to break in and find paying work.

I think its sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.

When I started drama school, theatre was the main draw. I never had any movie star notions. Not that there were family ties to the theatre, either.

I've gotten to go wonderful places, meet interesting and intelligent people, and I started of course in the theatre and continue to work in the theatre where there is some intelligence involved in it.

I like bold directors. I like directors that go against the norm in a way.

But I loved the theatre and I was just doing theatre 24/7 and kept dropping courses because I didn't have the time and the chancellor thought that wasn't a good idea after awhile.

Most of the directors that I show my movies before the final cut, are directors that I admire, and who do movies that are very different from mine.

London theatre is different: it is a commercial theatre that brings the whole of society into one place. And Shakespeare grasped, better than anyone else, what it means to engage the entire audience.

I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.

Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.

I came to musical theatre from straight acting, and a lot of my friends have a real prejudice about musical theatre - one I probably shared.

I don't really consider myself a female director, and I don't want to do so for other women. Female directors are just directors.

I can't imagine any director directing a screenplay of mine, because the great directors all have very personal styles, and the ones that don't are not very interesting directors.

If you want more people to come to the theatre, don't put the prices at £50. You have to make theatre inclusive, and at the moment the prices are exclusive. Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience.

There are a lot of female directors in Lebanon but we can't really talk about a true film industry, it's still very small. But we do have a few female directors.

My grandmother Shelley was an actress and would tell me about working in the theatre, while my grandpa on Dad's side, Gerard Dynevor, was a big influence in theatre and a TV director.

We can compare classical chess and rapid chess with theatre and cinema - some actors don't like the latter and prefer to work in the theatre.

When I came to Mumbai, I was working behind the scenes for 10 long years. Back then, music video budgets were insignificant and I had no assistant directors or art directors for most of the songs I directed.

I grew up around the theatre. My mother is an actress. I would fall asleep on tons of theatre chairs. It's in my blood; it's in my spirit and my fabric of who I am.

I used to do theatre in school and college. When I started working on television, only the camera was new. Theatre experience really helps one lose inhibitions.

I don't want to rescind American directors but I think that European directors in general, because of the size of the nations in Europe are exposed to all different cultures, they can easily travel from one distinct culture to another in a matter of hours - you can drive for two weeks across the United States and you're in the same basic culture - so there is a certain breadth of understanding and sophistication that they bring to it and frankly, in some cases they are less expensive than American directors.

I used to be one of the lead actors of a theatre group called Hetu when I was in medical school. Prithvi Theatre was our stomping ground. I'd got many positive reviews.

My first professional job was with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. I started out in an educational touring play and eventually starred on their stages. That was the theatre that nurtured me to expand as an artist.

I go where the material is, and I feel like I'm looking for really strong directors. That's the key ingredient. There are some directors I would move the sun and earth for, or stop the rotation of the planets, just to work with them.

We will get back to the earlier, instinctive and less inhibited nature of theatre. Today, spectators are passive, but Elizabethan, Greek and Roma; theatre was interactive.

I adapt to directors, I don't like making directors adapt to me. If I'm with Clint Eastwood then I'll do two takes, if I'm with Fincher I'll do 50 - though the thought of that sounds horrible.

I subscribe to the great George G. Scott quote, "All actors are in trouble. Directors who don't help are a pain in the ass". We all need help from directors. We are all equally insecure.

My plays have been performed before children, workers, and peasants, and they have well understood the meaning of my theatre. What is needed for people to watch my theatre is a freshness and openness of mind.

I came to theatre as a teenager by going to the National Theatre when it was at the Old Vic and sitting on padded seats in the gallery for 15 pence, which was the price of a bus fare.

When I was an undergraduate in Film & TV at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, most of the projects I shot had male directors, and only a few had female directors.

I was on a founding members of the Canadian theatre movement in the late 60's till the mid 70's and performed theatre from Halifax to Vancouver and all places in between.

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.

In the earlier days, people used to be very emotional about making films. There used to be a great friendship between music directors and directors; today that is missing.

I'm not as savvy and knowledgable about all of the directors that are out there, but as a person, I'm really open-minded and love meeting new people and watching the way directors film and their perspectives and following their lead.

I have worked with top directors like Rajamouli and Vinayak and with upcoming directors like Vamsi.