The bad end unhappily, the goo...
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. [A take-off on Oscar Wilde's "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."]
Tom
Stoppard
Playwriting
Playwriting
It is the writer's job to make...
It is the writer's job to make the play interesting. It is the actor's job to make the performance truthful.
The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
David
Mamet
Acting
Playwriting
A dramatist is one who believe...
A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.
Thornton
Wilder
Playwriting
Good drama must be drastic.
Good drama must be drastic.
Friedrich
Schlegel
Playwriting
Farce is tragedy played at a t...
Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
John
Mortimer
General
Playwriting
A playwright is the litmus pap...
A playwright is the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.
Arthur
Miller
Playwriting
A dramatic experience concerne...
A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.
David
Mamet
Playwriting
Drama assumes an order. If onl...
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising.
Vaclav
Havel
Playwriting
The theatre is the best way of...
The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.
David
Hare
General
Playwriting
The theatre is a gross art, bu...
The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.
Enid
Bagnold
General
Playwriting
