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.
- " The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda."
- Noel Coward
Source: www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm
- " We've put a man on the moon. If you miss a cue, no one will die."
- Shelli Aderman
- " I don't care if people think I'm an overactor. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter."
- Jim Carey
- " Good theater anywhere is good for theater everywhere."
- Frank Schneeberger
- " I find that kids who take conventional approaches whereby they study in theatre schools and then become assistants to established artists at various reputed institutions like Stratford and the National Arts Centre have a kind of fast-track to the knowledge process. Very often they become very useful to the institutions for their knowledge. At the same time they are often are denied the fundamental experiences that you get when you are actually producing your own theatre and making decisions yourself among your own peers. I think it's really important to place more emphasis on that than on getting a formal training. You can probably successfully, after you've gotten the buzz and you've become intoxicated if you want to enhance your knowledge in certain areas then it's worthwhile to go back to the institutions and find a niche. I found my niche though being a stagehand. You can be an assistant. You can be a production assistant. I think the key is to be around people who really, truly love what they are doing first, although they might not necessarily know what they are doing. [Lighting designer Jock Munro]"
- Jock Munro
Source: http://www.artsalive.ca
- " If you do a certain amount of work on your own before consulting with the director then the process starts with the script. I tend to do a certain amount of my own work before I go into a first meeting. It is important to be open minded in your first meeting with a director but I like to be well-prepared for that meeting because sometimes that time with your director can be limited. At the time of that first meeting, I will have read the play several times and from different points of view. I might read the play once to just check how many costume changes there are. I will read it again to make a prop list. I will read it again to analyse where the entrances and exits are and also to imagine where the furniture will be. It's difficult to concentrate on all of these things in one reading so I go through these processes in separate readings. Once you have that under your belt, depending on the period of the production, I guess I start to do visual research based on my response to the text. Depending on where and when I might choose to look at photography of the period or I might choose to look at painting or I might just look at history books and look for thematic influences. That's the start and having done that you team up with your director and see what their response is to those ideas you have and then you start to form a stronger direction. [Christina Poddubiuk, Set and Costume designer]"
- Christina Poddubiuk
Source: http://www.artsalive.ca
- " I think the best shows are always the ones where the elements come together very well and where the intention is realized. These are the shows in which what you set out do is what you end up with. Through very fortunate circumstances, like the combination of a good director, a good cast, and other people designing, you all manage to end up at the point that you intended when you started out. Nothing is ever perfect and there are always things that you'd perhaps do differently but I think that as long as you get a sense of fulfillment from a show then it is going to be a good experiences. [Christina Poddubiuk, Set and Costume designer]"
- Christina Poddubiuk
Source: http://www.artsalive.ca
- " I would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere. There's nothing in the world equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah of applause!"
- Charles DIckens
- " THEATRE LOGIC In is down, down is front, out is up, up is back, off is out, on is in, and of course - right is left, and left is right. A drop shouldn't and a block and fall does neither. A prop doesn't and a cove has no water. Tripping is O.K. A running crew rarely gets anywhere. A purchase line will buy you nothing. A trap will not catch anything. A gridiron has nothing to do with football. A Strike is work (in fact a lot of work). And a green room, thank God, usually isn't. Now that you are fully versed in theatrical terms, Break a leg... but not really!"
- Unknown
- " Every performer has moments of self doubt. The great ones, however,overcome every obstacle to reach their full artistic potential. It takes talent, to be sure, but it also takes a personality that simply will not settle for second best. That's what makes us respect the effort and admire the results."
- Unknown
- " We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself."
- Bertolt Brecht
- " Audiences know what to expect. . . and that is all they are prepared to believe in."
- Tom Stoppard
- " I have always been very fond of them . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it."
- Noel Coward
Source: www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm
- " Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness."
- Helen Hayes
- " If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it."
- Tennessee Williams
- " Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself."
- Tennessee Williams
- " This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"]"
- Alan Stambusky
- " All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it."
- Mike Nichols
- " The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny."
- Mike Nichols
- " You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny."
- Elaine Stritch