lm advertising
test this space
Theatre Quotes
Theatre Quotes
How to Search
- To browse quotes by category, leave the Search box empty and choose a category, then click the "Search" button.
- To find a quote with a specific word, enter a single word in the Search box, then click the "Search" button.
- To find a quote by a specific person, enter their name in the Search box, then click the "Search" button. Tip: Searching by using only the person's last name usually works best.
- " Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. Routines have their purposes, but the merely routine is the hidden enemy of high art. [Advice to theatrical designers,]"
- Cecil Beaton
Source: The Secret of How to Startle Theatre Arts May 57
- " Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model."
- George Lewes
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " Lighting design is ultimately not about numbers and calculations. It is about feelings and spontaneous reactions. Although the designer can calculate how 'big and bright' a fixture will be at any distance, from the manufacturer's data sheet, eventually he must just instinctively 'know', how a specific fixture will perform at any distance. This comes from both practice and experience."
- Bill Williams
Source: Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams
- " The first rule of stage lighting is...there aren't any."
- Bill Williams
Source: Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams
- " Ultimately, the lighting designer must be an artist! He must understand style, composition, balance, esthetics and human emotions. He must also understand the science of light, optics, vision, the psychology of perception and lighting technology. Using these tools the lighting designer must learn to think, feel and create with his heart."
- Bill Williams
Source: Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams
- " When it's good design, you alone will know. When it's bad design - everyone will tell you!"
- Unknown
- " Good actors are good because of the things they can tell us without talking. When they are talking they are the slaves of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor."
- Cedric Hardwicke
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " The most precious things in speech are pauses."
- Ralph Richardson
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly."
- Rosalind Russell
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself."
- John Gielgud
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " A good actor makes clear the meaning of the words. A better actor gives also the emotion of the part. The best actor adds emotion of which the character is unconscious."
- Clare Eames
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " It is the writer's job to make the play interesting. It is the actor's job to make the performance truthful."
- David Mamet
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " It is very hard to cast a number of plays adequately from the same company of actors without several parts being miscast."
- John Gielgud
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " The subjective actress thinks of clothes only as they apply to her; the objective actress thinks of them only as they affect others, as a tool for the job."
- Edith Head
- " The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor."
- Paul Scofield
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature. [Hamlet]"
- William Shakespeare
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success upon the stage. And I am still of the same opinion. Imagination, industry [hard work], and intelligence--the three I's--are all indispensable to the actor, but of these three the greatest is, without any doubt, imagination."
- Ellen Terry
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " I learned acting by doing it. And although I had never taken an acting class, it didn't take long to learn how to be on the stage. All you have to do is to be humiliated in front of an audience a few times. If you don't like being humiliated publicly, you learn how to act."
- Ron Vawter
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " When actors go onstage, you know immediately if they can do their job. You can be a lawyer or an accountant for years and not find out."
- Patsy Rodenburg
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
- " The main difference between the art of the actor and all other arts is that every other [non-performing] artist may create whenever he is in the mood of inspiration. But the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theatre. This is the chief secret of our art."
- Konstantin Stanislavsky
Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips