Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class.

It's called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn't realize what a rage I was in.

I love writing for the screen.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.

What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn't you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.

Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.

My fault now is making my plays too short.

I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.

You can't just go in there and open your mouth until the cast and director feel comfortable with you.

Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.

Plays are so much more special if they've never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.

That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you'll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.

Some really good things kind of swing both ways and I like to see people that can swing really, really, really sad and horrible and terrible and really, really, really beautiful and funny.

My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.

It's really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don't get in trouble.

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.

The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.

I'm very into the first production of the show.

I prefer theatre but TV keeps you well known.

At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.

Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.

The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.

Many of the Universities have very good Theatre Departments these days.

For the theatre one needs long arms... an artiste with short arms can never make a fine gesture.

Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.

When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.

But I think theatre in a repressive society is an immensely exciting event and theatre in a luxurious old, affluent old society like ours is an entertaining event.

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

I would have started the National Actors Theatre 30 years earlier.

I've been doing theatre since I was 5 years old.

I was on a founding members of the Canadian theatre movement in the late 60's till the mid 70's and performed theatre from Halifax to Vancouver and all places in between.

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.

This is a group effort. This is group theatre. This is no big star turn. You could do things with it to do that but it would just be out of kilter. This is one reason I like this play. This is a unit.

I feel that David took a risk with me. I have a sense that by starting off in the theatre and going off to do films you are seen to sell out in some way. I don't hold truck with that, but you can't stop people from feeling it.

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.

My parents used to take me to a lot of theatre when I was young.

Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people's hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.