Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First |
Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Management |
The core challenge for us as arts managers is to deal with change: changing external environmental conditions, evolving styles and approaches to the arts by our artists, advancements iin how we present and distribute our art to our ever-changing audiences, and the shifting competition for resources and attention. |
William J. | Byrnes | Management and the Arts (Fifth Edition) |
| Acting |
When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. |
Steve | Buscemi | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Acting |
The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made. |
George | Burns | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| General |
Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one. |
Robert | Brustein | http://izquotes.com/ |
| General |
The primary function of a theater is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent. |
Robert | Brustein | |
| Fundraising |
If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. |
Jeff | Brooks | |
| Directing |
The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful. |
Peter | Brook | |
| Directing, General |
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are suddenly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life. The marvel of being one. |
Peter | Brook | |
| Acting |
Preparing a character is the opposite of building--it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore. |
Peter | Brook | |
| Directing, Diversity & Inclusion |
Anti-racist theatre is not about doing all the things to end oppression at once; it’s about doing what you can. Small changes in behavior and thinking can have profound impacts on you and your organizational culture. For me, when directing, those small changes have manifested in changing my adherence to the myth that there wasn’t enough time to do the work, which resulted in pleasantries before rehearsal but no time set aside during rehearsal for people to acknowledge one another. Now every rehearsal I lead begins with a check-in to acknowledge what we’re bringing into the room; access needs are shared, and we honor the indigeneity of the land. Through session agreements we collectively define how we want to do the work. I find people appreciate having the space to bring the fullness of themselves to their art making. |
Nicole | Brewer | American Theatre, September 16, 2019 [ https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/16/why-equity-diversity-and-inclusion-is-obsolete/ ] |
