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Broadway

OVERHEARD

At the AMERICAN THEATRE WING SEMINARS

The American Theatre Wing, founder of the Tony® Award and sponsor of a number of other programs to promote live theatre, holds two seminars a year - in fall and spring - called Working In The Theatre. These three-day sessions invite drama students from colleges and universities in the Metropolitan area, members of theatre unions, the casts of Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off Off-Broadway shows and theatre lovers in general to hear all-star rosters of actors, directors, playwrights, producers and other theatre artists discuss the problems and rewards of working in the theatre. The workshops are held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and PLAYBILL presents here some quotable quotes from past seminars.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: "For my first audition I wanted to be taken seriously, so I went to a bookstore and bought a book on psychology. I put it on top of my bag so the producer would see it. So you see, it is all about pretending."

GLENDA JACKSON: "The terrible paradox about acting is that you must be completely vulnerable and yet completely secure....You are responsible for the whole play, no matter how small your contribution is...I like the excitement of playing to American audiences because they are enormously volatile...A bad night in the theatre is when the audience doesn't take the energy you give them, double it and return it to you."

CLIFFORD WILLIAMS: "The great thing about Britain from a director's point of view is that there are so many repertory theatres. The first five years that I was a full-time director I did 50 productions a year - some well, some badly. You either learned your craft or died."

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: "I had just finished shooting Alien, which was awful for me, that way of working. I came back to New York thinking 'theatre, theatre, heal me.'"

MATTHEW BRODERICK: "When I was five I had to fill out a form to get a library card. Under occupation I put 'Actor.'"

SINEAD CUSACK: "My first part was in a play my father (Cyril Cusack) wrote, based on Kafka's The Trial. He'd put up with so much of my screaming for 11 years that he added the part of a deaf-mute child and said, 'Let's give it to Sinead.' Up until then I'd wanted to be a nun."

JOE MANTEGNA: "I was in L.A. doing an episode of a TV show that starred a 165-pound orangutan. He even had a bigger dressing room than I did. Then I got this phone call from Gregory Mosher about Glengarry. He said it was a choice between Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and me. The yuks or the bucks. They went for the yuks. And that's what keeps you going as an actor. You're always one phone call away from something that can change your life."

THERESA MERRITT: "When you sing, you learn to paint a portrait with the song. I can't see that it's any different when you act."

FRANK LANGELLA: "I auditioned for The Immoralists down in the Bowery. I did my scene and the producers said, 'O.K. you can go home now.' Then they called the next morning and asked me to come in again. I read with 14 actresses and I got worse and worse. Finally I had to say, 'I can't go on with this, either cast me or let me go home.' One turned to the other and said, 'Didn't you tell him he had the part?'"

JEROME LAWRENCE: "I'm the kind of writer who is unhappy and can't sleep at night unless I've written five pages every day."

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