Theatre Quotes

Designers play with scale and proportion, making the ordinary extraordinary by taking an object out of context and changing its scale in relation to the characters' size and appearance.

The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited.

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.

God comes to us in theater [in] the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity.

Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own.

The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

A cat actually thinks visibly. If you watch him jump on a shelf, the wish to jump and the action of jumping are one and the same thing... It's in exactly the same way that all Brook's exercises try to train the actor. The actor is trained to become so organically related within himself, he thinks completely with his body. He becomes one sensitive, responding whole... The whole of him is one.

I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced--although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world--what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done.

What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin.

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.

The world's a theater, the earth a stage,
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout.

This is a non-commercial theatre. It's got to be run by a person who sees right from the start that the profits won't be money profits. [On the idea of a Federal Theatre Project, 1934]

If I wanted to have people tell me what to do, I would have become an actor.

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.

Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.