David Ives Quotes

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins.

In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.

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.

I realized what you could do in motion pictures by surrounding yourself with geniuses.

Obviously in Art of Noise, I'm just part of the group, and when I do film scores, it's always in collaboration with the director and other people involved.

I have worked with several art directors and production designers who are just magnificent. Dave Getz, Paul Felix, Ian Gooding... just amazing artists, and I would say, if I had anything to do with it, I just pick good artists!

I actually like the collaboration of working with different artists.

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

In my experience in series TV, if you have a good crew and a great cast, it's going to be a great group - similar to the theater where it's a bunch of people who are really talented and go to work each day and challenge each other, and if you are lucky enough to get a hit then it's five or six or seven years of this kind of work.

I had some experience writing collaboratively when I wrote for the theatre.

The final product in a play is not just the written word. It's the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it's only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse.

I love the process of working with a filmmaker and the writers and the actors.

On stage, I have felt most fulfilled as a playwright, for everything I create gets to grow and evolve with collaboration from directors, actors, and so on.

It's good to work with a writer-director.

Mike Schur knows exactly what everything should look like but, at the same time, is super collaborative and loves working with actors that make choices and bring stuff to the table.

I would absolutely be interested in doing a Broadway production if it was the right project. But my dream is to be writing pieces of theater for my best friends and putting on plays in New York City and seeing our vision come alive. I just hope to always be creating.

I'm very much of the opinion that theatre is a collective art form, not just one person's vision.

Music has been more a solitary, creative thing. The acting side of things and working in movies has helped me collaboratively with music in terms of helping me get ideas across to other people and making it more of a team efforts.

We tend to see films as artifacts of one mind. The reality of it is, I think, when you come out here and start working, you have to learn pretty quickly that it's a very collaborative process.

I am very happy to be working with so many talented directors and writers, who are penning scripts that are interesting for me.

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

Anybody who knows how to make a good movie, knows that it's a collaborative undertaking. To deny that its really dangerous.

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 like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.

I loved doing casting because I love actors, and I am very conscious of what actors do. But I always wanted to be a producer.