Marianne Elliott Quotes
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I'm quite unusual in directing terms: I'm a woman. I'm quite a girly girl. I was never academic.
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'Friends' is easy to dismiss, but it's really good television - the art with which those actors play with comedy shouldn't be denigrated. And they also know how to play irony, which I think a lot of English actors might find quite difficult.
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I'm really fascinated by other directors' methods. I've done a lot of learning by observation.
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I hope for continued bravery and risk-taking for all theatremakers in 2018 and beyond.
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It's difficult to find an actress prepared to play a fading star.
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You have to lead by example. You have to be the calmest person in the room. You have to be very open. I think the qualities of a director are to enable and to find the best in everybody.
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I suppose what's so amazing about working at the National Theatre is that, because it's a subsidized theatre, you're not trying to create a product that's going to have a mass market in order to make the money back.
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The plays I choose to work on are about having masks. We all have masks in life, but there is a different inner life going on. The audience has to work hard to see what is going on. I love what is not on display.
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I've enjoyed lots of productions, and it's always been down to the actors I've been working with.
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My generation feels it has been lied to a great deal.
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The actors work out how to create the show with me during the rehearsals. They owe it to themselves and each other to maintain that contract regardless of what the critics say.
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I'm drawn to female stories, of which there aren't that many, and particularly to stories now about older women. The things they have to confront and override is really fascinating. That's a whole untold part of our world.
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I had done drama at university, but I never thought I could be a director. There were so few female directors then. I just assumed you had to be a man to be a director. I also assumed you had to be extremely authoritarian and extremely intellectual, none of which I was.
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I've seen many shows ruined by bad reviews and good reviews, so I always tell my actors not to read the reviews until after the run is over.
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I hope that subsidised theatres continue to be rewarded for the wonder of talent they provide to this industry, on stage and off.
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I think theater is so undervalued. I have seen things there that have been far more vivid than things that actually have happened.
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I used to love getting older.
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You need to see yourself in what you direct, I think - directing is quite self-indulgent from that point of view.
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Some directors have the gift of the gab, but I don't.
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With everything I do, there always seems to be a massive risk involved.
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The less subsidy we have, the more the 'producers' take over, and the 'bottom line' becomes the raison d'etre. That's quite an unappealing landscape for artists.
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When I was a kid, I never spoke. I would sit under a table and not speak to anybody. No words for years.
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As you get older, you realise that your identity becomes more important - the environment in which you have grown is actually part of who you are just as much as your family or your school.
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I suppose I always find a lot of characters that are deeply, deeply keening with a sense of yearning and desire through sadness, but they have a bravery that keeps them going despite that.