A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.
Mike NicholsRead
I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of creating a safe environment for creative expression in acting.
Mike Nichols highlights the role of a director or artist in facilitating deep emotional expression in actors. By using the metaphor of 'opening a vein', he conveys the idea that true artistry involves vulnerability, and it is crucial for the director to ensure that this process occurs in a safe and supportive atmosphere, thereby fostering genuine performances.
Themes
ActingVulnerabilityArtistryCreativitySafety
In practice
Example use cases
During a theater workshop, a director could quote this to encourage actors to connect with their emotions.
More from Mike Nichols
All quotes →There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.
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You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed.
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The thing about being an outsider... is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking because you're constantly looking for the people who just don't give a damn.
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I've learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things.
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Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
Mike NicholsRead
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I don't torture myself. And I do the work because of the pleasure involved. I'm satisfying a compulsion I find nigh-on irresistible. It's not necessarily because of the work itself. I just feel the need for a period of regeneration afterwards. Like leaving a field fallow when you've grazed too much on it. I feel depleted.
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