Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.
Stephen DaldryThe 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.
Stephen DaldryYou [as an actor] have a responsibility to Jonathan's book and you have a responsibility to talk about a subject that is going to be, whether it's contentious or not, it's going t bring up a huge, emotional response from people. A lot of people will say they are ready or they're not ready.
Stephen DaldryYou go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.
Stephen DaldryI love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored.
Stephen DaldryThe culturally specific, in particular, the American porch play that American writers have cherished and loved for many years in terms of their new writing, has seemed to have very little relevance to a much more fast-flowing, abstract, experimental drama that has been emerging in [the UK]. The porch play, not to mention that thing of, Oops, I wasn't loved enough by my father, somehow didn't have the relevance in this country.
Stephen Daldry