Theatre Quotes

Ultimately, in order to have theatre reflect the world as it is, the industry must value the artists that it has historically marginalized, and start by redirecting resources to support these artists’ work and lives—a move that could both make theatre a more inclusive space for both artists and audiences.

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.

Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to sing. No one would cast a dancing part with someone who cannot dance sufficiently to come up to professional standards. The same is true of acting. But when it comes to singing, more often than not it is amateur night. . . . Either musicals should be written for specified performers in the first place, or they should be cast with people who are adequate to its dancing, acting and singing demands.

For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

A nation that does not support and encourage its theater is -- if not dead -- dying; just as a theater that does not capture with laughter and tears the social and historical pulse, the drama of its people, the genuine color of the spiritual and natural landscape, has no right to call itself theater; but only a place for amusement.

Your eyes will always go to red, which is why there is a lady in red in all my shows.

There's a certain secret every actor must have in his work. If you reveal it, you're letting the audience in on the wrinkles and convolutions of your brain. All I want them to do is to see the effect.

Good drama must be drastic.

A good play tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad play tells us the truth about its author.

Remember! the word is playwright --W-R-I-G-H-T -- like wheelwright. A play is not so much written as wrought. it's designed and built and shaped; it's carved out.

Don't think you're funny. It'll never work if you think you're funny.

You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible, irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material, sensational -- and probably sexual.

People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.

Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open.

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.

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops.

You'd think is something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realize how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

My playground was the theatre. I'd sit and watch my mother pretend for a living. As a young girl, that's pretty seductive.