And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.
I understood that I was not the best director in the world nor the worst director in the world. I realized that there is a very mysterious element to what works and what doesn't work in the theater. And it's good to know that from the beginning.
I'm set to have my best year ever: I'm hiring some acts and there will be a show in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. I'm going to use my theater to its fullest potential.
Soon I worked during twelve years in theater works of the prestigious Theatre National Populaire. It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting.
I seemed to belong to three countries: I had an apartment in Paris, a house in Hollywood, and when I married British theater director Peter Hall, I moved to London.
I left Iran back in 1985. I lived in Turkey for a while, then I went to Germany. I joined a theater company there, and we toured the country.
I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.
I did ballet and gymnastics, and then I started acting when I was eight - just doing amateur theater at a place called Oldham Theatre Workshop in my hometown.
Before shooting, I prepare with the actors much more like it's a theater play than a movie. Apparently, that way of working is very unusual.
I'd say there are two kinds of theater: one you end with an answer, one you end with a question.
Whoever becomes the head of the National Theater finds himself in a position like that of Nelson's Column - pigeons dump on you because you're there.
One of my comics is read by more people - around 70,000 - than will see my entire run at Manhattan Theater Club. That puts things in perspective.
I knew there was something special about the theater for me something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.
If you have a smartphone, you can give content to the world. The days of putting a movie in movie theaters because people don't have a choice is over.
I'm used to working hard. Theater can be very grueling, and that's all I've ever known. It's what I've done for 20 years, which is crazy.
I'll eventually go back to theater because the feeling of being on stage where you have the audience right there, you can't replace that with anything.
I've learned that in the theater the story is everything. Every lyric, every line and every musical gesture has to propel the journey of a given character or the overall plot.
It's interesting - years ago, I had such bad stage fright during musical theater auditions that I just gave up. And now I'm on Broadway.
'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.
The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.
In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.
