Marianne Elliott

“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.”

“I find theater emotionally expensive and all-involving. You have to pour so much blood and passion and heart into it. And so much time. Why do that for something that's only vaguely interesting and anyone can do it?”

“I always loved and secretly wanted to do 'Company.' It was produced on Broadway in 1970, and it's about a successful 35-year-old guy who's starting to think he should get married.”

“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.”

“Horses are wild animals, essentially, and they're not there to do what humans want them to - they can be browbeaten or cajoled or trained, but they don't hear English; they're not obedient most of the time.”

“My dad had a big influence on me, and although I was never very bright at school, I used to love philosophising with him about big universal things - and I think that's what directing is.”

“For me, it's life or death doing plays: there's this perfectionist thing about me that it has to be brilliant - anything less than that is a failure.”

“I believe that theater has to be utterly life-changing for the people watching it.”

“Some directors have the gift of the gab, but I don't.”

“I used to love getting older.”

“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.”

“In subsidized theater, you are encouraged to take risks. It's about being imaginative and artistic. That's the priority. It might not be a success, but let's try.”

“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.”

“It's a tremendous asset if you have a visual eye because you can make huge visual statements in a very theatrical way and play to the strength of theatre. But the high end of directing is working with actors and making the acting the best it can be.”

“I felt like that growing up - that I didn't have a voice.”

“I never wanted anything to do with the theatre as a child. I was dragged there under duress.”

“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.”

“I suppose that I'm excited by exciting theater. It takes a risk to show us the world in a new way.”

“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.”

“Often during rehearsals, I catch myself thinking, 'God, this is hard. Why am I always choosing such difficult plays to put on?'”