What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
People say, 'How can you stay in a play for a long time?' I say, 'The audience is never the same.'
It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in 'The Practice' than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.
The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.
I only really started to go to plays and to be interested in drama 20 years ago when as an artist I was already well-rounded. I think I'm more disciplined today.
When you're doing a play that's fully produced, you have the benefit of rehearsing for four or five weeks, so you really get to live in the skin of the character for much longer than when you first start doing a character on TV.
If I play, I try to concentrate on producing my best.
When you do a play, or even a movie, you have weeks to finesse your character. You really understand why they do what they do. In TV, you get new material weekly about your character.
Play as much as you can as often as you can with as many people as you can. That's how you learn and grow.
The repetition of the theatre means you've got the time to get deeply inside the person you're playing.
When you do a play, you do it for a couple months, and it just gets in your bones. You can learn about somebody that way.
No opposing quotes found.