T'Keyah Crystal Keymah Quotes

Kids used to come round to my house, and I'd force them to do a play in the bay windows of my house and get all the mums and dads to sit and watch. I'd write the programme, write the play and be the star.

I wrote my first play when I was nine. It was performed at Hampstead Theatre.

In elementary school, I was always writing little plays for my friends to be in. I was much more of a director than a performer.

I've written virtually as long as I've acted, it wasn't a sudden transition. I acted in my first play when I was 16 and I wrote my first play when I was 17.

When I was about 12, I spent the summer writing four plays on my dad's old typewriter for a school play competition. And I wrote little comic bits at secondary school and at university.

I was called to audition for a play when I was very young, following which I continued to act as well as write and direct. When I moved to Delhi and joined Hindu College, theatre became a very big part of my life.

As a kid, we had one television channel and a sad little roller rink. And there was not much else to do. So I used my imagination all of the time growing up. That's the main way I played. When we moved and I went to high school, I did my first play, and I was completely addicted to theatre. It felt like home; it felt natural.

I was five when I did my first show with the Mountain Play Theatre company in Marin County. I started young, and since no one in my family was involved in the industry in any way shape or form, I think everyone thought I'd do a few plays and that would be it. But then I kept doing it.

I thought acting was what grownups did. It was such a part of my childhood. I was already in love with performing before I knew there were other options. By then, it was too late.

I was in the play 'Fat Pig in the West End,' which is a comedy but has dramatic moments.

I was dating girls who were actresses, and that was fun, so I took a playwriting class. But that was short-lived. That was one year. Around that time, I was seeing movies that were making me think in terms of images.

My mother, Marnie Fahr Steyer, was a lifelong smoker - up to three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day. I like to think that, if Mom were still with us today, she'd be happy with the strides we've made to protect our children from the ongoing health crisis of tobacco addiction.

'Arcadia' is obviously a play that's got interesting things in it that are perhaps quite hard to grasp.

I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play.

Plays were really my last option. The reason I didn't write plays initially was because I thought theatre was the worst of all the art forms.

Critics have to sit through an awful lot of rubbish, and you feel really sorry for them. In fact, I've been in a play where I felt sorry for the critics.

My first play was 'The Room', written when I was twenty-seven.

Performing King Charles in Mike Bartlett's astonishing play in London and New York has been one of the high points of my career.

I come from a theatre group called Drama Tech in Delhi. When its founder Mr. Chopra called me and appreciated my work, that was also satisfying because he gave me my first play.

People assume that actors working in films won't have the time to do theatre. But I make sure that whenever I'm free, I watch a play.

I tell stories, and I do it through writing, through acting, through my stand-up, and through directing. All the hats I wear - producing as well - ultimately, I am a storyteller.

I think Hyderabadis have the best sense of humour in the entire country and I still remember the famous plays of 'Adrak Ke Panje' by Babban Khan and 'Dhed Matwale.'

I grew up in a household that was very friendly towards the theatre and acting.

I remember how as I kid I would love stories of every kind - whether they were narrated in school or what I read in books. Storytelling would always appeal to me, I would take part in poetry reciting, dramatics, choreography and debates. There was this fascination for performance, which finally culminated in a professional sphere.

But acting had entered my world through older brothers. It was a basic thing: all that just looks cool.