Steven Berkoff Quotes

‘When I started studying acting, I was enamored of actors who used movement to
enhance language’ (actors, total theatre, physicality)

‘We often find far more power in a symbol than in something that is an actuality”
(Total theatre, expressionistic set design, Designer symbolism, Mie, Guests)

‘When I write about working-class people, I do so in ways that reveal them at there
absolute, magnificent worst’
(Mr. Samsa, Clerk, Lodgers)

‘When I ascended from the depths of the working class to middle-class, the higher I got,
the more dishonesty I found’
(Lodgers)

‘[Realism] can eventually have a deadening effect, since it only mirrors the conscious
world’
(Acting, Expressionism, Design, Kabuki, Mime, Barrault, Lecoq)

‘I was fascinated by Les Enfants du Paradis, one of the great French films of all time. It
was shot during the war and it’s about the theatre of mime. At the beginning, Jean-Louis
Barrault does the most exquisite mime that I’ve ever seen, over the mistaken identity of a
pickpocket. It is such an astonishing piece of silent cinema; it made me fall in love with
mime and want to study it’
(Barrault, Lecoq, silent-film design choices)

‘If I have a trademark style, I suppose its about physicality, a simplicity of

communication both orally and physically;
(Total Theatre, Berkovian style etc..)

‘My own father reminded me of Mr. Samsa. He was the archetype of the East-End dad.’
(Mr. Samsa)

‘A bug. Loathsome, inferior, outsider and also magnificent, a fighting bug that, once
transformed, can sink no further into obloquy.’
(Gregor)