#Acting onstage and off professional#

It’s too much pressure, that’s the whole thing for me.

It happens to people who’ve done a lot of work in film. I’ve done “The 24 Hour Plays” a couple of times. I’ve worked through fear in different areas of life.

I do want to get back to doing something, eventually. And it’s kept me off the stage, because of the fear of giving in to the fear. I remember it back then and I remember it well now. You definitely do feel a little bit trapped. In the best case, you’re able to let go and loosen the reins a little bit. Right now I’m sick, and I’m nervous to go on sick. STONE: I never get stage fright like I didn’t want to go on. That happened the second or third time around. To me, it wasn’t like, the lights went on, and I thought, “This is it.” That never happened. I was probably appropriately nervous the first time doing that. KEATON: I started to write primarily comedy and perform standup. If there’s a new joke around the corner, my left leg will tell. I don’t know if the audience can tell, but there’s a 6.7 on the earthquake scale going on with my femur in coordination with my patella. You’re up there with your own thoughts you think are clever, but what if the audience doesn’t? My leg shakes when I go onstage. I was always very happy inhabiting things onstage.

On the way home on the bus, I can’t really explain, but I had a strong sensation this was something to be taken much more seriously. I came up, and he had everyone lie down, being dead, as he did a Macbeth soliloquy on the battlefield. At one point he asked for people to come up onstage. A teacher took a bunch of us down to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., to Ian McKellen doing a one-man show he had written. My mother was saying: “What’s going on? You love this.” I had a notable experience when I was 17. I went to a public high school near Baltimore, and I remember nosing around, doing those plays, and having this terrified sensation that girls would see me doing something onstage. We went to the theater all the time, and I always loved it. My mother taught English and Shakespeare my parents were real lovers of the theater. My parents took me to a play when I was 5 I was completely entranced by it, and had the babysitter sign me up for classes.

#Acting onstage and off professional#

I’ve never done a professional theater role, if you don’t count and a thing in high school, “Noises Off.”ĮDWARD NORTON: When I was a kid, I had a babysitter who was very passionate about theater. My first time onstage is my first-grade play, I played the younger sister in “No Turkey for Perky.” That took place in my elementary school cafeteria Studio 54 is very decked out and a little more debauched. I was always keen on that.ĮMMA STONE ( currently playing Sally Bowles in “Cabaret,” with Alan Cumming, at Studio 54 on Broadway): I grew up doing music theater in Arizona. Sometimes a little act skit written by someone. I did “Oliver Twist,” I was part of the chorus line. Every festival season with the Shoreham Players I would always play a part. I sang the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” I lived in a small town outside London, in Kent. NAOMI WATTS: I did a “Mary Poppins” number, maybe I was 6. After doing one of them, the high school bullies said, “I can’t believe you’re still doing the robot.” As an adult, it was in New York, in the back of a hamburger restaurant, Hamburger Harry’s, in Midtown. I did it through the ninth grade then it wasn’t cool. I would try to do a version, just as a robot. There was this great Shields and Yarnell. ZACH GALIFIANAKIS: As a kid, I entered talent shows as a robot. There was a good theater group in Pittsburgh - they did politically oriented stuff, that was pretty satisfying. I was doing a play at night while working in the day. Then I had to drop out of school and make some money, and then go back to school. I was never exposed to that type of literature, Chekhov. I did some scenes in a theater class in college I took on a lark. MICHAEL KEATON: I wasn’t a theater kid, to put it mildly. Do you remember your first time onstage, either as a kid or an adult? Galifianakis, for one, was in Calgary, visiting his in-laws.) Here are edited excerpts from the conversation: They spoke by phone from various quarters of the continent. Keaton’s post-rehab daughter, and Zach Galifianakis, who plays his lawyer and confidant, were asked to recall their early experiences with theater. The three stars, along with Emma Stone, who portrays Mr.