Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Lighting |
Lighting paperwork is a living thing, continually evolving throughout the production process until opening night. |
Anne E. | McMills | The Assistant Light Designer's Toolkit |
Lighting |
Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light. |
David | Belasco | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose. |
Lee | Strasberg | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Critics, Playwriting |
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping. |
Jean | Cocteau | |
Musical Theatre |
Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math! |
Nathan | Lane | http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/musical_theater |
Acting |
Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Directing |
Most directors work from inside out and from the outside in. They concentrate not only on the life of the characters but also on the play's structrual or external elements, including its central conflict, function, event, architecture, and suspense. |
Michael | Bloom | Thinking Like a Director: A Practical Handbook |
Fundraising |
Most giving is 80% emotion and 20 % rational. And the best way to get to someone's emotions is to tell a story. |
Unknown | ||
Playwriting |
Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong. |
Meredith | Willson | |
Acting, Shakespeare |
Much of the day I have busied myself making notes on the small parts in Shakespeare, often nameless, which are rewarding to the actor if only he'll not dismiss them as beneath his dignity. If I can work it up into a talk I might call it, 'Only a cough and a spit ' ---the phrase so often used by actors to explain away a lack of opportunity. |
Alec | Guinness | My Name Escapes Me, 1996 |
Acting |
My playground was the theatre. I'd sit and watch my mother pretend for a living. As a young girl, that's pretty seductive. |
Gwyneth | Paltrow | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
Acting |
Never get caught acting. |
Lillian | Gish | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut. |
Charles | Laughton | Wikipedia (under Bette Davis) |
Costumes |
Next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business. [Birdie, in All About Eve] |
Joseph | Mankiewicz | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
No one makes you write plays; the world could sort of get along without me turning out a play every year, so I do this because I enjoy it enormously. It gives me great pleasure, and working in the theatre is, I think its own reward. |
Terrence | McNally | |
General |
No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world. |
Kenneth | Tynan | http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/kenneth_tynan.html |
Acting |
Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are. |
Marlon | Brando | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Of course, the age-old tradition that a star must appear even if he or she is practically dying is an excellent one, but it can be carried too far. I one played a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle with a temperature of 103 and gave sixteen members of the company mumps, thereby closing the play and throwing everybody out of work. There may be a moral lurking somewhere in this, but I cannot for the life of me discover what it is. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Lighting |
Oftentimes the quality of the light tells the story: the time of day, the weather, whether sun is streaming through the window. It can also help you appreciate what the actor is feeling, what the playwright wants you to feel. Any engineer can put a spot on someone. |
Jules | Fisher | It Happened On Broadway |
Acting |
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;/ 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. |
Oliver | Goldsmith | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |