Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First | Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting |
Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture. |
Spencer | Tracy | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Whatever you do kid, always serve it with a little dressing. |
George M. | Cohan | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Pray to God and say the lines. |
Bette | Davis | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Act in your pauses. |
Ellen | Terry | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
If you want to help the American theatre, don't be an actress, be an audience. |
Tallulah | Bankhead | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
When you go into the professional world, at a stock theater somewhere, backstage you will meet an older actor--someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes about life in the theater. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man. |
Sanford | Meisner | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Don't think you're funny. It'll never work if you think you're funny. |
George | Abbott | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life. |
Albert | Finney | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are. |
Marlon | Brando | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much. |
John | Wayne | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author--or some other author--to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well. |
George Bernard | Shaw | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
If you achieve success, you will get applause. Enjoy it--but never quite believe it. |
Robert | Montgomery | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Don't use your conscious past, use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little. |
Stella | Adler | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential. |
Robert | Morley | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| 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 |
| Acting |
Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is fifty percent of the performance. |
Shirley | Booth | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Lead the audience by the nose to the thought. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Walk in, plant yourself, look the other person in the eye, and tell the truth. |
James | Cagney | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin. |
Katherine | Hepburn | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
