Theatrical Adaptation Quotes

You can make anything into a play for the simple reason that the human mind is one of the best writers in the business. So, if you've got a writer who's clever enough to give you enough clues, you will fill out every blank spot in a play, every single one.

When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story, the story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I'm struggling with - my own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.

The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.

I'm still trying to write. I wrote a play a few years ago, so I'm trying to start writing again. The play was called The Commons Of Pensacola. It was at MTC [Manhattan Theatre Club] with Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner. It was kind of like a riff on Ruth Madoff.

I never played a rich man, I never played a prince. And to play a sailor or longshoreman you had to make your dance more eclectic and varied, but still keep it indigenous to your nationality, upbringing, and background.

In the theatre, every form once born is mortal; every form must be reconceived, and its new conception will bear the marks of all the influences that surround it.

Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.

I never write a play with an eye to film.

I called Scott Rudin, and I told him I wanted to do the play [Fences], so that's how the ball got rolling. I never said, "I'll do the play, and the next year I'll do the film, I just wanted to do the play."

I'm aware that a film is different than a play, and that a film isn't going to be the filmed record of the play. It's its own separate entity, and I've come to peace with that.

In 1977, I wrote a series of poems about a character, Black Bart, a former cattle rustler-turned-alchemist. A good friend, Claude Purdy, who is a stage director, suggested I turn the poems into a play.

There was so much on 'Superstar' that we didn't intend. I mean, there were things that we did which were innovative, but some of them were forced on us because we couldn't get anybody to do the show. 'Evita' was much more sophisticated. That doesn't make it better, but it does make it different. We knew what we were doing.

What I do is interpret, not create. I may add elements and do something different. That is what is so incredible about theatre. Why do we love it that there are nine Hamletsor six King Lears over two years? We love to watch a different actor attack the same material.

The exercise in theater is night after night you are doing the same play, but you have another opportunity to explore. It changes nightly even because of the audience and your day going into the evening of the performance. With film it's much more controlled.

I did a different production with a different director and Bill Pullman. Oleanna­ - the one you saw - we were doing right after Bourne Identity or right after it came out.

There was a play that was written by who I think is America's greatest playwright, and he wrote a small part in it for me. It was going to open in Chicago, and then go to New York. But then, he died. It was Arthur Miller. That was the reason I turned Lost down.

If, for instance, we'd made the film after the show had been to Broadway, it would have been exactly the same film but we would have been assured that they would have understood it. We didn't have to do any alterations for Broadway. I was supposed to go a fortnight before it opened to alter anything that was necessary and there was nothing really.

Look, if you're playing Romeo and your Juliet is a pig, you find something you can love about pigs!

[Vincent Price] did Oscar Wilde on Broadway, and I think he probably did it because he was almost like an Oscar Wilde. He had that brilliant humor.

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".

I did a film called 'Days and Nights,' which is a modern-day retelling of and inspired by Chekhov's 'The Seagull.'

On Broadway and in the United States it's very different - people crossover all the time into television. I think that we'll get there [in London] in the end, but it has to start with who comes to see you in the musical and whether they can see beyond the dancing and the singing.

Any time you take a movie to stage, you can't do the same thing; it's not gonna work.

'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.

Polly Findlay showed real insight and imagination in her production of my translation of Seneca's Thyestes at the Arcola. I enjoyed her use of the space and the detail of her work with the actors, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with Light Shining.