In Paris they have special wheelchairs that go through every doorway. They don't change the doorways, they change the wheelchairs. To hell with the people! If someone weighs a couple more pounds, that's it!
I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.
I think that the main thing that you can learn from watching 'The Spectacular Now' is just learning about growing up and moving on.
I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.
At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater.
There's a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That's baseball.
I thought of America as Natalie Wood and Bob Wagner sprawled on the edge of a Hollywood swimming pool biting into the same red apple.
Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.
As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional.
Like anyone who goes to college, you're leaving a familiar surrounding and a comfortable environment and your friends and everything, and you're starting fresh. It can be pretty daunting.
Why, when I was a child, I didn't say, as most children do, that I was going to become an actress. I felt that I was an actress and no one could have convinced me that I wasn't!
I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.
You might say that Richard Wagner was the Queen Victoria of Europe. He had musical children everywhere!
If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.
When I'm alone at home, I really prefer to listen to Wagner's orchestral music rather than any vocal music. I find it illuminating not to have to pay attention to voices in the recordings.
All the dialogue on tape, and we'd play the tape in performance. Then I thought it'd be interesting if the actor's repeated what they heard on the tape, but at a slower speed, so we'd get a web of language.
If you can't fully believe in your ideas, it very quickly communicates to a group of actors who need something to hold onto. They need to believe that whatever criticism, whatever comment is received, is meant.
I had spent time in New York, where I loved the idea that theater could be done up in tiny little rooms rather than for lots of money on a big stage, and be tied to ordinary life.
I think in our culture there's been a tendency for people to blame the audience. There is a tendency in our industry to say, 'The audience has left the building. People don't want culture anymore.'
I remember thinking, 'I can't act.' Pretending to be someone else is a terrifying thought. The thing was that, along with other people, I could create a whole world. I felt absolutely right directing.
