I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater I was in all likelihood not going to find financial success.

The kind of theater that I do is sort of 'narrative realism ' which I think in the broadest sense is legitimate to say is mainstream. I mean in a certain sense Suzan-Lori's plays have had mainstream levels of success. But Suzan-Lori is in some ways not a narrative realist.

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason if I have any success in that milieu so to speak is because I spent a lot of years directing I spent a lot of years behind the camera.

My strength as an actor is in the theater - I know that about myself. Some actors get onstage and vanish but I'm much better there than I am on screen.

I'm not a huge fan of improv theater or improv sports or whatever because it still just looks like a tool. It looks like a technique to me.

I was a huge theater geek growing up and that was not the easiest thing in the world especially growing up in Chicago where sports are really the norm. I was always off to the theater at night from 7 years old on. Friends there in the Midwest who could talk to you about the idiosyncrasies of 'Pippin' were few and far between.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

My main concern is theater and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish and it has to do better.

I smile so much at the theater my face hurts when I leave.