My World is a Stage

MARY McDONNELL:

"I remember feeling in my very first part, the terror of waiting to go on, which I still experience at times. But the liberation of being on the stage and just letting go - there's a feeling of flying when it's working. It's almost like a weightlessness, performing live. But you have to work very hard with your craft to allow yourself to be in the right place that that can take place."

“It’s really important for actors to feel that they’re more than something for hire. We’re not encouraged to think of ourselves as having a point of view. But I realized I needed to encounter material that asked questions I needed to ask of myself, and also I had to work with people who felt the same way.”

"Go light the world. The world needs your light."

"What happened to me when I started to read plays was quite profound. I think it was the first time that my brain understood how to view the world. In other words, I started to think in a completely different way. My particular intelligence was stimulated through reading plays."

"I love it when a director provides me almost a shadow, so I know that somebody is there with me. I'm like Peter Pan with the shadow sewn on. I'm not scared to go where I have to go - into these strange places and possibly fall into these holes and make mistakes - as long as the director is there with me. I don't like feeling alone."

"I can't wait to see what other actors are going to do. I can't wait to be affected by them and to feel what they're going to make me feel."

"I'm interested in how we've been separated from our spirituality as women, which is a place of power for the feminine."

"A woman covers more territory. I think that's true in nature. It's a natural thing. It's not a learned power or an acquired skill. It seems often to me that men have this way by nature of being very specifically directed at one thing. I look at my husband's focus when he's working on a part. The whole world could be exploding around him, and if he's doing his work, he doesn't notice. I yearn for that kind of concentration. I really have to discipline myself. I've played strong women, not because I seek these roles out, but because that's the kind of woman I respond to."

"That's what we're always hoping for in our work.You're like - oh well, maybe if I do this part, maybe I can save some grant this year on therapy."

"Actors spend their lives searching for worlds they can enter, searching for stories that require their particular talents, their ideas, their idiosyncrasies. We search for involvement in stories that contain relevance to our world, because built deeply into the core impulses of the actor is a strong, almost overwhelming need to connect with the people."

"Being able to funnel those feelings, those spoken words into an creative art form, you can face the truth about your situation, and touch your own heart, let alone someone else's."

"What's exciting about the stage is the gigantic size of the moment, the audience, the surprise, out-of-control element. You're required to use everything; it's almost athletic. Film is much quieter, a simple, less-outgoing activity. I think it's called a 'take' because the camera takes ideas from you, but when you're onstage, you have to reach the person in the last row."

"I love to work. I love to have complexity."

"Whatever happens between Adama & Roslin happens in spite of her ideas and thoughts about what shouldn't happen."

"I think Roslin is on the cutting edge of female characters who are learning how to handle power."

"I can only speak from her point of view and I sense that the level of emotional vulnerability an actual relationship would require, would seem to threaten perhaps Roslin's stability. Her commitment is to the fleet...and her lack of emotional confusion has, I believe, been one of her strengths. I doubt it would be easy for her to surrender her heart at this point."

"I think she has to come to terms with a great deal about her identity or her destiny, as the whole show moves into a kind of place of reckoning with the soul of the individual and the soul of the collective."