Stewart: Theater Offers Most Satisfaction
2 min readAlthough he is proud of his work in the movies and on television, Patrick Stewart‘s real love is the theater.
Since returning to England from Los Angeles, Stewart has been active in theater, including various roles in Shakespeare plays as well as his latest project where he is playing the Bard himself.
“I came back to this country because I wanted to see if I could relaunch my career as a classical actor in the UK,” said Stewart.
“I didn’t know if it was possible. I didn’t know if I had been away too long, if I would be allowed to jump back into the theatrical community. But I knew I had to give it a shot. While I was busy and successful working in Hollywood, it was never really what I wanted to do.”
Stewart’s work on Star Trek: The Next Generation and X-Men gave him the confidence to tackle challenging roles in theater. “I think that my instincts are more developed now than they were,” he said. “I did a lot of challenging work in the seventeen years that I lived in L.A., work in film and TV and stage.
“But I think one of the things that the experience gave me was confidence, a lot more than I had had before – and that’s something that I have been able to bring into the work in the last five or six years.”
Those last five or six years have been very fulfilling for Stewart. “And they have been without doubt the best years of my life to date. I gave twelve years of my life to Star Trek and I am very, very proud of the work, and that goes for X-Men as well, wonderful experiences and very high-quality work, but the inner personal extended satisfaction is something that I get by being in front of a live audience every night.”
Stewart will be appearing in Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death from now through May 22 at the Minerva Theater in Chichester, England.
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