Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
General |
I will accept anything in the theatre . . . provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home. |
Noel | Coward | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
Critics |
I have always been very fond of them . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Acting |
You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don't bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Acting |
She stopped the show--but then the show wasn't traveling very fast. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Acting |
Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
General |
The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Acting |
Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control. |
Noel | Coward | |
Acting |
In the first act, you get the audience's attention - once you have it, they will repay you in the second. Play through the laughs if you have to. It will only make the audience believe there are so many of them that they missed a few. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Playwriting |
It's no use to go and take courses in playwriting any more than it's much use taking courses in acting. Better play to a bad matinee in Hull - it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction. Come to think of it, I never did play to a good matinee in Hull . . . |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Acting |
I will accept anything in the theatre . . . provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Acting, Shakespeare |
You have to think about the big speeches in Shakespeare as the most important things the character has ever said; they need to be spoken with your chest cut open, your heart bare, and with tremendous passion. You need to tear the words from the sky. If you don't feel like you've run a marathon when you're done, you're not doing it right. It takes courage to open yourself up to an audience like that, letting them see your insides without desperately trying to show them--it takes practice. |
Ben | Crystal | author of Shakespeare on Toast |
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 |
General |
The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater. |
Robertson | Davies | |
Acting |
Pray to God and say the lines. |
Bette | Davis | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. |
Bette | Davis | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
Acting |
One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price. I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality. |
Robert | De Niro | |
Acting, Set Design |
I started off as a theatre designer, and by some extraordinary circumstance I saw something in Stratford-upon-Avon, and realized that that's the kind of design I want, but also that that's the kind of designer I'll never be. |
Judi | Dench | http://www.brainyquote.com |
Fundraising |
In his book, Managing the Non-Profit, Peter Drucker noted that most non-profits are woefully ignorant about “market knowledge.” Passionate non-profit leaders firmly believe that what they are doing merits support, but many are unable to articulate to others the importance of the project and why donors should contribute to it. If you can articulate quickly, passionately, and convincingly why your project should be done, you will have much more success. |
Bill | DeWalt |
http://www.artsconsulting.com/pdf_arts_insights/insights_sept_2013.pdf |
Acting |
I would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere. There's nothing in the world equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah of applause! |
Charles | DIckens | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html |
General |
There is no greater gift that a person can be given than to be put in touch with his creativity. [Theatre] transformed my life. [Director Declan Donnellan on discovering theatre as a lonely 16 year old.] |
Declan | Donnellan | The Guardian |