Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I used to love getting older.
'War Horse' is just an extraordinary being.
I never want to see 'Hamlet' ever again! Never ever!
I didn't want to just be remembered for 'War Horse.'
My generation feels it has been lied to a great deal.
It's difficult to find an actress prepared to play a fading star.
With everything I do, there always seems to be a massive risk involved.
I am still very observant. I am absorbed by people and why they do what they do.
I believe that theater has to be utterly life-changing for the people watching it.
I hope for continued bravery and risk-taking for all theatremakers in 2018 and beyond.
The better the acting is, the less visible the director and the less visible the actor.
Directors have this mask of being in control and in charge, but underneath, I'm terrified.
I never wanted anything to do with the theatre as a child. I was dragged there under duress.
I'm really fascinated by other directors' methods. I've done a lot of learning by observation.
I'm quite unusual in directing terms: I'm a woman. I'm quite a girly girl. I was never academic.
I'm very much of the opinion that theatre is a collective art form, not just one person's vision.
I've enjoyed lots of productions, and it's always been down to the actors I've been working with.
I suppose that I'm excited by exciting theater. It takes a risk to show us the world in a new way.
When I was a kid, I never spoke. I would sit under a table and not speak to anybody. No words for years.
It is draining when you have a child, and there aren't many women directors with kids out there as role models.
You need to see yourself in what you direct, I think - directing is quite self-indulgent from that point of view.
If you put a blank canvas in front of Matisse and say, 'This has to be a success,' who's going to pick up a paintbrush?
Staging any play is very exposing because, if you are going to do it well, you have to put so much of yourself into it.
It would be quite interesting to use Kermit the Frog to act like a real frog. But it wouldn't produce captivating theatre.
I had a very embarrassing time acting extremely badly at university, which is when directing suddenly became so attractive.
Often during rehearsals, I catch myself thinking, 'God, this is hard. Why am I always choosing such difficult plays to put on?'
I hope that subsidised theatres continue to be rewarded for the wonder of talent they provide to this industry, on stage and off.
I think theater is so undervalued. I have seen things there that have been far more vivid than things that actually have happened.
I am quite an insecure person, and I think that, like any director, if I'm asked about my vision for a piece, I feel very vulnerable.
I'm interested in teasing out the contemporary issues in what I'm working on, however old the piece might be, whenever I'm working on it.
I'm always drawn to female stories with female protagonists, and I particularly yearn for more older actresses to take centre stage in 2018.
I've seen many shows ruined by bad reviews and good reviews, so I always tell my actors not to read the reviews until after the run is over.
For me, it's life or death doing plays: there's this perfectionist thing about me that it has to be brilliant - anything less than that is a failure.
If you can't see it, you can't be it. It's just having those brilliant women break out and do something - then other girls can say, 'I can do it, too!'
My father was a director, and my mother and grandparents were actors, so I spent a great deal of my time as a teenager trying to get away from the theatre.
A bad audition is usually the director's fault, not the actor's. It's up to the director to get the atmosphere right to get the best out of your auditionees.
It's predominantly a male society, predominately a male culture, predominantly a male theatre, and predominantly male critics, but that's changing, definitely.
The less subsidy we have, the more the 'producers' take over, and the 'bottom line' becomes the raison d'etre. That's quite an unappealing landscape for artists.
In subsidized theater, you are encouraged to take risks. It's about being imaginative and artistic. That's the priority. It might not be a success, but let's try.
Whether you're a man or a woman, life can be very, very difficult and confusing and desperate, and it's life-enhancing to know that somehow, there is a way through it.
We're always steered towards what is good in the canon by a male perspective. I like to do plays with a female protagonist who finds her way through. My way is unusual.
The actors work out how to create the show with me during the rehearsals. They owe it to themselves and each other to maintain that contract regardless of what the critics say.
I always loved and secretly wanted to do 'Company.' It was produced on Broadway in 1970, and it's about a successful 35-year-old guy who's starting to think he should get married.
I just think that you have to approach anything you do with a huge amount of integrity - I don't really care where it comes from, whether it's a children's piece or an adult piece.
You have to lead by example. You have to be the calmest person in the room. You have to be very open. I think the qualities of a director are to enable and to find the best in everybody.
My dad had a big influence on me, and although I was never very bright at school, I used to love philosophising with him about big universal things - and I think that's what directing is.
I suppose I always find a lot of characters that are deeply, deeply keening with a sense of yearning and desire through sadness, but they have a bravery that keeps them going despite that.
As you get older, you realise that your identity becomes more important - the environment in which you have grown is actually part of who you are just as much as your family or your school.
Horses are wild animals, essentially, and they're not there to do what humans want them to - they can be browbeaten or cajoled or trained, but they don't hear English; they're not obedient most of the time.
The plays I choose to work on are about having masks. We all have masks in life, but there is a different inner life going on. The audience has to work hard to see what is going on. I love what is not on display.