Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First | Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting, Directing |
I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act. |
Orson | Welles | |
| Directing |
This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"] |
Alan | Stambusky | |
| Acting |
These performers that go on about their technique and craft - oh, puleeze! How boring! I don't know what 'technique' means. But I do know what experience is. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
| Acting |
Audiences are not strangers to me. They're the best friends I've got in my life. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
| Acting |
You cannot tell an audience a lie. They know it before you do; before it's out of your mouth, they know it's a lie. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
| Acting |
You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
| Acting, Directing |
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 | |
| Acting |
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 | |
| Playwriting |
I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
| Playwriting |
I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people, really. |
Tennessee | Williams |
