Theater Legacy Quotes

There's a real passing down in the theater, almost ad nauseam. You have to listen to older people talk about their experience, but it makes you very aware of what has come before you or what is coming after you - that you're a part of a link in a chain. It's not all about you.

Eugene O'Neil created an American theater, and Tennessee Williams taught it how to sing.

I wanted to be a classical actress. I plodded along. I went to junior college in San Francisco, I was in a Repertory Company. My hero was Eva Le Gallienne, who was a great theater actress at the turn of the century who created her own company, and she wrote these hilarious autobiographies at the time.

I wanted to drag Shakespeare from obscurity. I've been a fan my whole life.

I never felt I left the stage.

If you're a classical actor, every Shakespearean part you play, you then say, 'McKellen did it this way,' and, 'Jacobi did it this way.' There's a whole list of Oliviers and people, whether you play Hamlet or Richard II or Richard III, any of those roles. And I found that a bit when I did 'La Cage.' It didn't bother me one bit.

The first 45 or 50 years of the regional theater movement, all these folks, they built these theaters. The job of the next generation is to maintain them.

Speaking about myself, I've been pleasantly surprised that my older plays are still being performed. Most important is that they still have something to say to today's audience, in particular the young people who enjoy my plays. That's the best I could hope for, that the plays aren't single-use products of one era.

When I was doing theater in the 1950's, 60's and 70's we weren't allowed to film any of the shows that I did, it was against union rules. It was a stupid law, because so much is lost. We now have no record of these famous stage plays, so it turned out to be very narrow-minded thinking.

The idea of 'Yes on Broadway' has come up. It would reflect the history of Yes.

I've been fortunate in my career to have performed in revivals of great musicals and to have originated roles in musicals that have in turn been revived. And I'm not dead!

It's more than usually possible that I won't do a play again. But Skylight is one of the great plays in the English language. I was lucky enough to be a part of it at one point in its life, and it's a timely thing to deliver it again in the modern world.

It is such a joy to join a legacy of amazing female playwrights who have managed to break through the glass ceiling and reinvigorate the Broadway stage by bringing a fresh and necessary perspective.

Now the Gielgud Theater is a very famous old theater, because it was originally called the Globe, and the Globe is where my mother made her very first professional appearance in London, was at the Globe Theater.

I started with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee and Lou Gossett, Jr. and the rest of the wonderful cast of 'A Raisin In The Sun.' We were directed by the great Lloyd Richards. The play was written by the wonderful Lorraine Hansberry, and it was produced by Phil Rose. That's where my start was, so... not a bad way to start.

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for 'Show Boat.' The kind of theater I chose to be involved in is completely a direct reflection of what 'Show Boat' made possible.