Gorky’s text becomes relevant only when the actor is able to grow his or her character in his or her soil, so to speak, basing it on his or her own experience. This is the highest aim of the laboratory. It is an intersection between the actor’s personality and the character he or she is creating, a stranger.

Miranda interests me the most in this play.  She is most often regarded as a naïve princess, though she has been created by Prospero, she is Prospero’s soul.  Eventually, in deportation to desert islands creators still used to raise their Mirandas.

Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is usually understood as a celebration of romantic love. It is, really, an instance of social drama. In dramatic circumstances, an ordinary love becomes invested with tragic power of the highest order. What interests me most in this tragedy is how love can come forward and thrive in an atmosphere of hatred or war, as in Verona.

The Hamlet question seems absurd to us at first. Our existence is so comfortable, and the future seems almost guaranteed. But actually the future is to be found inside each of us, and not in political slogans or commercial advertising.