drama

I made my drama teacher cry. I only took drama to get out of writing papers in English and the teacher was this thespian Broadway geek and here I was this Italian guy from Staten Island and I would put her in tears.

I owe the little formal education I got to my drama teacher, Mr. Pickett, who got us to read Shakespeare, Moliere, and other classics.

The most famous Obama precept is, 'No drama.'

But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.

Geopolitical drama lessened but did not die after the Cold War; in 2008, the specter of thousands of seeming automatons banging drums at the opening of the Beijing Games frightened and enthralled the world, reminding us that China was a nation on the rise, a competitor for global dominance.

'Hill Street,' because of the wacky nature of many of our characters, really allowed us to indulge a kind of cheek-to-jowl juxtaposition of high drama with very low humor.

If you look at 'The Best Man,' there's a lot of humor in that, but I never consider that movie a comedy. I felt that it was a drama with comedic elements and comedic parts to it.

The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.

When you finish a drama, you go, 'I can't wait to do a comedy.' When you finish a comedy, you go, 'I want to do a dramedy, dark humor.'

Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor.

In high drama or high tragedy or anything, it's not really human unless there's some humor at the same time. And vice versa. So I guess I tend to gravitate towards projects which tread a dodgy tightrope between two things, which aren't really one or another.

In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor.

At drama school, we were taught to write down your dreams and carry them around in your wallet with you, and they'll come true, but I didn't do that.

Free yourself from the complexities and drama of your life. Simplify. Look within. Within ourselves we all have the gifts and talents we need to fulfill the purpose we've been blessed with.

The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.

The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.

Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.