Theatre Quotes

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.

It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential.

It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.

It is very hard to cast a number of plays adequately from the same company of actors without several parts being miscast.

It isn't what I do, but how I do it. It isn't what I say but how I say it - and how I look when I do and say it.

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 . . .

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman.

Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture.

Lighting design is ultimately not about numbers and calculations. It is about feelings and spontaneous reactions. Although the designer can calculate how 'big and bright' a fixture will be at any distance, from the manufacturer's data sheet, eventually he must just instinctively 'know', how a specific fixture will perform at any distance. This comes from both practice and experience.