Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Costumes |
Before a character even speaks, we 'read' their appearance through their costume. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Set Design |
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. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Set Design |
Everything placed in the performance space, with the characters, creates a context for their story. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
General |
The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited. |
Oscar | Hammerstein | |
Musical Theatre |
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it. |
Oscar | Hammerstein | |
Acting |
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. |
Cedric | Hardwicke | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General, Playwriting |
The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts. |
David | Hare | |
Acting, General |
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. |
Julie | Harris | Christian Science Monitor 15 May 79 |
Playwriting |
One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick. |
Moss | Hart | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own. |
Moss | Hart | |
Playwriting |
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising. |
Vaclav | Havel | |
Acting |
The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life. |
Helen | Hayes | |
Acting |
Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end. |
Helen | Hayes | |
Acting |
Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness. |
Helen | Hayes | |
Set Design |
A ground plan is important in terms of its rigor. If your plan is soggy and weak, your production will be soggy and weak. |
David | Hays | http://www.emerson.edu/emersontoday/index.cfm?action=3&articleID=678&editionID=45 |
Acting |
Actors are the only honest hypocrites. |
William | Hazlitt | |
Acting, Costumes |
The subjective actress thinks of clothes only as they apply to her; the objective actress thinks of them only as they affect others, as a tool for the job. |
Edith | Head | |
Acting |
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. |
John | Heilpern | |
Playwriting |
Failure in the theatre is more dramatic and uglier than in any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty. |
Lillian | Hellman | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
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. |
Lillian | Hellman | Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers On Theater |
Playwriting |
But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. If I write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart. |
Beth | Henley | http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/beth_henley.html |
Acting |
What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin. |
Katherine | Hepburn | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four. |
Katherine | Hepburn | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
Acting |
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. |
George | Herman | |
Playwriting |
Drama should not present new stories but new relationships. |
Frederick | Hessel | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
The world's a theater, the earth a stage, |
Thomas | Heywood | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
General |
This is an extremely foolish and stupid and idiotic kind of attitude--to expect theatres to make money. Do the public schools make money? Do libraries make money? Does the zoo make money? Do the sewers make money? It's a community service. |
John | Hirsch | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. |
Alfred | Hitchcock | |
Acting |
Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously. |
Judy | Holliday | http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/judyhollid227986.html |
General |
The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout. |
Robert | Holman | http://izquotes.com/ |
Acting |
Acting's entertainment. It's not brain surgery. |
Anthony | Hopkins | Hello! Special Edition, 9.6.01. |
General, Management |
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] |
Harry | Hopkins | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
White male playwrights' works continue to dominate production slates. Sometimes it seems easier for them to have the texts of their driver's licenses produced than for the female or non-white playwright to have her best play produced. The reality is, they are more often given that all-important opportunity to fail than the women's play or ethnic play. |
Velina Hasu | Houston | http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/quotes.html |
Backstage, Lighting, Set Design |
If I wanted to have people tell me what to do, I would have become an actor. |
Rob | Hudd | http://www.denagy.com/techiejokes/tjokes.html |
Acting, Shakespeare |
Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you're a king. |
Josephine | Hull | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General, Management |
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. |
David Henry | Hwang | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. |
Henrik | Ibsen | http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/playwriting_quotes.html |
General |
Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater. |
William | Inge | Saturday Review 22 Feb 64 |
Playwriting |
I started writing for the theatre because I hated it. |
Eugene | Ionesco | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
You think, you don't just speak. The lines come off the thoughts. |
Jeremy | Irons | American Film magazine |