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Theatre Quotes

Theatre Quotes

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Displaying 421 - 440 of 441
  • " I've never quite understood the idea of a "season." Whenever an artistic director says to me, 'I have this slot,' I always start to feel we're parking cars or something."

    - David Henry Hwang

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " If politics is the art of the possible, theatre is the art of the impossible."

    - Herbert Blau

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " If Hitler's still alive, I hope he's out of town with a musical. [variously attributed]"

    - Larry Gelbart

    Source: http://povonline.com/Hitler%20Line.htm


  • " It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack."

    - Voltaire


  • " You have two kinds of shows on Broadway -- revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is -- a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture."

    - Stephen Sondheim

    Source: NY Times 3/12/00


  • " In creating and performing in a play, there is a sense of common purpose, of living something outside of yourself, of hauling to one common goal. All these different artistic disciplines are corralled into one purpose, and in the process, incredibly strong bonds are created."

    - Eric Stern

    Source: It Happened On Broadway


  • " The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression."

    - Harold Pinter

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process."

    - Paula Vogel

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along."

    - Athol Fugard

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " I started writing for the theatre because I hated it."

    - Eugene Ionesco

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage."

    - Anton Chekhov

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist . . . Does not see the graves under the flowers."

    - George Jean Nathan

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick."

    - Moss Hart

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist."

    - Kenneth Tynan

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation."

    - Ring Lardner

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case."

    - David Mamet

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write."

    - Tennessee Williams

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " Drama should not present new stories but new relationships."

    - Frederick Hessel

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard."

    - Anton Chekhov

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips


  • " Failure in the theatre is more dramatic and uglier than in any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty."

    - Lillian Hellman

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips