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If you're going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn't expect.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

There's nothing like a play. It's so immediate and every performance is different. As an actor, you have the most control over what the audience is seeing.

The economics of theater are painful. I still think that the theater community should be looking much more rigorously at how to let the playwright keep the money they make.

What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.

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.

It's great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people.

Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience.

It's very lucky to be able to do a job where I get to sit about writing plays all day and going to the theatre. The downside, I suppose, is that you put it out there, and people are invited to like it or loathe it.

I love the stage, I love the process of acting in theatre, but unfortunately, it doesn't pay the bills.