Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Acting |
Being another character is more interesting than being yourself. |
John | Gielgud | 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 |
Costumes |
Before a character even speaks, we 'read' their appearance through their costume. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Backstage |
Beat to fit, paint to match. |
Kate | Bolgrien | http://www.denagy.com/techiejokes/tjokes.html |
Fundraising |
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough. |
Oprah | Winfrey | http://www.museummarketingtips.com/quotes/giving.html |
Costumes, Set Design |
Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. Routines have their purposes, but the merely routine is the hidden enemy of high art. [Advice to theatrical designers,] |
Cecil | Beaton | The Secret of How to Startle Theatre Arts May 57 |
Acting |
Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model. |
George | Lewes | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Directing |
Audiences know what to expect. . . and that is all they are prepared to believe in. |
Tom | Stoppard | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html |
Acting |
Audiences are not strangers to me. They're the best friends I've got in my life. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
Critics |
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. |
John | Osborne | Time, 31 October 1977 |
Management |
As nearly everyone knows, a manager has practically nothing to do except to decide what is to be done; to tell somebody to do it; to listen to reasons why it should not be done, why it should be done by someone else, or why it should be done in a different way; to follow up to see if the thing has been done; to discover that it has not; to inquire why; to listen to excuses from the person who should have done it; to follow up again to see if the thing has been done, only to discover that it has been done incorrectly; to point out how it should have been done; to conclude that as long as it has been done, it may as well be left where it is; to wonder if it is not time to get rid of a person who cannot do a thing right; to reflect that he or she probably has a family, and that certainly any successor would be just as bad, and maybe worse; to consider how much simpler and better the thing would have been done if one had done it oneself in the first place; to reflect sadly that one could have done it right in 20 minutes, and, as things turned out, one had to spend two days to find out why it has taken three weeks for somebody else to do it wrong. |
Unknown | ||
Acting |
As an actor, you can't play the tragedy. You can only play the choices, the intentions of your character. |
Christine | Andreas | Notes for CD "The Garland Variations" |
Playwriting |
As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays--to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash. |
Harold | Pinter | http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html |
Fundraising |
Appreciation can make a day--even change a life, Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. |
Margaret | Cousins | http://www.museummarketingtips.com/quotes/giving.html |
Backstage |
An interesting difference between new and experienced stage managers is that the new stage manager thinks of running the show as the most difficult and most demanding part of the job, whereas the experienced stage manager thinks of it as the most relaxing part. Perhaps the reason is that experienced stage managers have built up work habits that make then so thoroughly prepared for the production phase that they [can] sit back during performances to watch that preparation pay off. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
Lighting |
An effective lighting design is like a beautiful painting. Your medium is bringing someone to an emotional state he or she would not achieve at that moment without your art. This does not and can not happen by accident. |
Glen | Cunningham | Stage Lighting Revealed |
Acting, Backstage, Directing |
An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote. A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills. |
Mark | Leslie | http://www.denagy.com/techiejokes/tjokes.html |
Acting |
An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents |
Alec | Guinness | http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html |
Acting |
An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow. |
Lawrence | Barrett | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Directing |
An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation. |
Billy | Wilder | Friendly Advice (book) |