Jessica Hagedorn Quotes

So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing.

A play is not a play until it's performed, and unless it's a one-person play that is acted, directed and designed by the author, many other people will be deeply involved in the complicated process that leads to its performance.

I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium.

Compared to film or television, theater is more interactive, collaborative.

Theatre is like an actor's nectar, like how cinema is a director's medium.

Of all the mediums, theatre is the one where you really need to have something to say - because it's just you, the words, and the space.

Theatre is a very beautiful and interesting medium because it's a live show, unlike a film - once released, it's gone.

I did a brief stint with set design and stage design. And I tried playwriting, too.

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'

I just think, certainly for live music it should look as good as it sounds.

Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

With Cold Sassy Tree having its first production, I saw no necessity to do anything other than produce it with the correct setting.

I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music.

I've just been learning how to direct my own videos, choreography, doing costumes... every creative opportunity there is with my music I've taken.

It's really interesting working in television as opposed to the theater, where you know the arc of the character and you are able to create this whole backstory.

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

I love writing plays because they are living, fluid things that are energised by the producer, designers, musicians, actors and audience.

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.

The great thing about the stage is that you have a structured month-long rehearsal period where you're going in every day. You have to have lots of run-throughs with theater because there are no second takes in front of a live audience.

I come from a tradition where the writer writes a play for the actors, rather than for himself, and the dialogue is made to work onstage, so it needs actors to help shape it. So you never get a play right straightaway.

Theatre's a much less faddish, more sensible world than TV or film.

I love performing. I love getting out there. It's kind of like why I make music.

What I like to do is just make good music, good movies, hopefully perform a good show full of energy and just have some fun.