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'Black Watch' has taken its place in the canon of Scottish theatre, and that's fantastic. It's a very particular kind of theatre. It's about the music, the movement, the whole 'event' of it.
John Tiffany -
If you're going to be hosting any event or a performance or having dinner with people after a performance, it is work, but it's also social: food and a glass of wine would be involved often.
John Tiffany
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For me, there is a real line between something being the worst thing in the world and the best thing in the world.
John Tiffany -
Where film can eat up story, theatre needs space and breath.
John Tiffany -
I did a couple of short films when I was in Scotland.
John Tiffany -
I'm fascinated to see how 'Black Watch' connects with an American audience.
John Tiffany -
Some actors just have a quality, a way of combining music and character and story, where everything just falls into place.
John Tiffany -
It blows my mind that you get Shakespeare where the 'low' comedy characters have got Northern or Welsh accents.
John Tiffany
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When I sold my flat in Glasgow, I bought a little cottage on the North Yorkshire coast. Whenever we go up from London to stay there, I'm just like, 'I'm home! I'm home in Bronte-land!'
John Tiffany -
I never get star-struck. I never fanboy. Ever, ever, ever.
John Tiffany -
I hate rules. I hate 'This is the way things are done'. I hate a lack of reinvention. I hate theatre as an archeological exercise. Theatre needs to be urgent.
John Tiffany -
My need is about communicating the whole, and when the whole is there in the text and in what the actors are doing, then it doesn't need 'frou-frou,' as I call it.
John Tiffany -
I tend to work quite a lot during the weekends. My weekend can often be about two hours on Sunday.
John Tiffany -
The only thing I fear is when people say, 'I should go to the theatre more.' I say, 'We should create work that makes you not have a choice.'
John Tiffany
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I suppose the key for me is about opening up experiences and untold stories to audiences.
John Tiffany -
We never want to update 'Black Watch,' because it's about a moment in time, and through that moment, it manages to speak about Afghanistan and all other wars. This play is 'about' Iraq, but it's actually about every war that's ever been or will ever be.
John Tiffany -
I realise that there's something about fantasy, whether it's written by the Grimm Brothers or J. K. Rowling or Thorne or J. M. Barrie, that it gets closer to the human experience than realism every could.
John Tiffany -
We just don't need any more 'Macbeth's in the world, however brilliant mine might turn out to be.
John Tiffany -
Pinocchio's really naughty. He's all impulse: 'I want to sleep now. I want to eat that. I want to run off to Pleasure Island.' It's commedia dell'arte meets Grimm's tales.
John Tiffany -
In film, if you've got to do a scene in a swimming pool, you do a scene in a swimming pool. If you've got to blow up a car, you blow up a car. In theater, you can't do that, and therefore, you have the opportunity to engage the audience's imagination in a way that's rich.
John Tiffany
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I've never understood why anyone would want to join the army, but that's irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that, as long as we go on voting in governments who are prepared to take troops into an illegal war, that army is a necessity.
John Tiffany -
I don't like the idea of stepping-stones in art forms: that you do your time at a regional theatre, and then you work in London and go to the West End, and then you do films. I've never felt like following that trajectory.
John Tiffany -
What has started to interest me is how you use all the different disciplines and tools we have at our disposal, and that includes going into different art forms, like music and movement, because often they can tap into things that characters can't necessarily express through words. Audiences really enjoy that total experience.
John Tiffany -
I know Australians are no strangers to pubs, but in the U.K., the pub is a real meeting place because the houses can be quite small, so the pub is an extension of the living space.
John Tiffany