I was the first African-American woman to play Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' It was at the Virginia State Theatre, and we turned Richmond upside down.

I can't tell you how many bizarre shows at UCB I was a part of.

Yeah I love 'The Witches of Eastwick,' it's a classic, it's hilarious, I did a parody play in San Francisco and New York with Peaches Christ and Coco Peru.

I've worked with leading men so worried about losing their charm that they were always winking to the audience.

The thing is that I'm an actor first, and in 'Once,' I was able to be a musician and a singer as well as an actor.

Drama is not a literal portrayal of events. It's a depiction, it's impressionistic.

An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I...

I'm looking forward to becoming a marvelous - excuse the word marvelous - character actress. like Marie Dressler, like Will Rogers.

The first job I got was this TV job in this show called 'The Unusuals.' Then I did a play called 'Slipping,' and at the same time I was rehearsing another play at Playwrights Horizons, and that kind...

In theater, one of the biggest problems when you're rehearsing comedy over and over again is that you stop laughing at each other.

After 'Rent,' I tried to make a record, and it didn't work out, and it was the Broadway community that welcomed me back. It's where I feel the most understood, most at home.

I think 'Hand to God' is going to change the landscape of Broadway. I think Broadway, truthfully, will never be the same.

I think the wonderful thing about doing theater is that it's more of an actor's medium. I think that film is more of a director's medium. You can't edit something out on stage. It's there.

I have a coach, but I'm not theater-trained or a technical actor.

From the time I was five years old, theater was all I knew. I did community theater; I went to theater school. It's like going to the gym as an actor: every single night, you have to recreate the...

One of the main reasons I started writing these one-man shows was that this really evil casting director once said to me, 'you're peripheral and you'll always be peripheral. You'll come in with the...

Please God, I hope my experience in downtown theater isn't over, because I'd love to keep making weird plays. I can't wait for Charles Isherwood to call my next play 'sit-com-y' and tell me to stick...

A villain number is a very valuable thing to have, but if you look at most musicals, one way or another there's an antagonist number.

Then, in 2000, John Reid, Elton John's former manager, asked me to audition for the stage version of The Graduate he was producing. So I worked on it, got the part, and after three weeks' rehearsal I...

After 'Dexter' and 'La Lupe', I would love to return to theater. I'm just ready for more.

I don't think just funny is enough on Broadway.

One reason why Shakespeare's plays remain so popular is that they're now regularly presented in updated stagings with a contemporary flavor.

It's definitely one of those things when you decide to be an actor that it would be really cool to be in a Broadway show or a series regular on a hit show.

I think we sublimated our Broadway desires by doing theater in Hollywood - not on stage but by doing the movies of 'Chicago' and 'Hairspray' and also musicals on TV. We did Rodgers and Hammerstein's...

Going to the theater or having the honor of performing in theater reminds you of your humanity in a very different way. It's a real release and an incredible challenge. But the stage is a dangerous...

I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen, and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character.

I was inspired to become an actor from theater I'd seen, so I assumed I'd do a lot of theater. But when I left Guildhall, the first thing I did was a short film - I played the main character. And I...

I did a lot of theater as a young actor in my early twenties, and my first few records really came from writing songs through the rehearsal processes.

'You Can't Take It With You' has eighteen people onstage at one point. Musicals entail a larger collaboration, and I love that.

Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging.