Very simply, a platform is the thing you stand on to get heard. It's your stage. But unlike a stage in a theatre, today's platform is not built of wood or concrete or perched on a grassy hill. Today's platform is built of people. Contacts. Connections. Followers.
They're not so much fans of independent movies are they are of independent theatres. They like small theaters with a vague, septic smell. They're not wild about the newfangled theaters with the assigned seating.
Once you get into your stride, the camera becomes like another person in the room. It's like being in a very small theatre where there is no getting away with anything because the audience is centimetres away from you.
I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe.
I used to entertain myself - I taught myself to use stilts and juggle and ride a unicycle. But I was never immediately interested in theatre.
The great thing about London is the little pockets of culture, like Hackney, which has its panto and its great community. Of course there's also the West End with its brilliant theatres and thriving tourism but to also have areas like Hackney which are so community based but not exclusive, that remind you that those surrounding you are the most important, is what makes London what it is.
Most Americans would agree that Plowshares is a Theatre of the Absurd.
This outfit called Los Angeles Theatre Works does readings of plays.
Miracle at St. Anna. ' I was challenged by Spike Lee. When he offered me the film, he looked me square in the eye and said, 'You start this film off and you end this film. I don't want a dry eye in the theatre. Can you pull that off?' He was dead serious.
I had been nine years in the theatre and hadn't had massive success. My only thing was I wanted to be an actor and I didn't care when, where, or how much for.
Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose.
I gave my life to the Group Theatre, because in it I'm building something for myself. What I build, I am.
All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.
My very first professional job was with a theatre company in 1965 and the first job they gave me was literally shovelling sh*t. I was an assistant stage manager and they told me to clear out the prop store. I opened it up and no-one had been in there for 25 years and it was inches deep in rat sh*t. So before I could get anywhere I had to clear it up. I thought, 'All these years of training, the best drama school in the world, and this is what I'm doing. '
The play is not in the words, it’s in you!
The theatre infects the audience with its noble ecstasy.
I proceeded to prove everybody right as to how bad an economics student I was by failing as an assistant manager in every theatre I went to that hired me, both as an assistant manager and as an actor. I lost money and tickets, and I couldn't keep track of anything. So eventually they fired me from assistant-manager jobs, but kept me on as an actor.
I think in the old days, everybody used to act really quickly because Hollywood was built by theatre people.
I'd love to teach theatre arts.
I've been doing theatre since I was 5 years old.