Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote |
First |
Last | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lighting |
The stage designer quickly learns that things are not always what they appear to be. A director who asks for 'more light' on an actor, probably doesn't mean that at all. Instead he really just wants 'to see the actor better'. The designer might chose to reduce the lighting contrast around the actor, or simply ask the actor to tip his head up a bit. Both solutions solve the problem without 'adding more light'. So the lighting designer also has to be a good listener, a careful interpreter and a skilled crafts person. |
Bill | Williams | http://www.mts.net/%7Ewilliam5/sld/sld-100.htm |
| Lighting |
The lighting designer will never stop learning. Every production or project will present new challenges, new obstacles, new human dynamics and new problems to solve. There can and should be many failures along the way. This is part of the artistic process. The lighting designer shouldn't hesitate to make as many mistakes as possible - just don't make the same mistake twice. |
Bill | Williams | http://www.mts.net/%7Ewilliam5/sld/sld-100.htm |
| Lighting |
Stage lighting is no longer a matter of simple illumination as it was less than 100 years ago. Today, the lighting designer is expected to be a master of art, science, history, psychology, communications, politics, and sometimes even mind reading. |
Bill | Williams | http://www.mts.net/%7Ewilliam5/sld/sld-100.htm |
| Lighting |
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. |
Bill | Williams | Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams |
| Lighting |
The first rule of stage lighting is...there aren't any. |
Bill | Williams | Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams |
| Lighting |
Ultimately, the lighting designer must be an artist! He must understand style, composition, balance, esthetics and human emotions. He must also understand the science of light, optics, vision, the psychology of perception and lighting technology. Using these tools the lighting designer must learn to think, feel and create with his heart. |
Bill | Williams | Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams |
| Lighting |
Stage lighting is no longer a matter of simple illumination as it was less than 100 years ago. Today, the lighting designer is expected to be a master of art, science, history, psychology, communications, politics and sometimes even mind reading. |
Bill | Williams | http://www.mts.net/%7Ewilliam5/sld/sld-100.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) |
| General |
If no single reason can fully account for the lack of great work on Broadway these days, there is a factor in the discussion that is rarely mentioned but which has a bearing on what gets produced: the audience. . . It's not audience intelligence that has waned; it's audience passion -- the pro forma Broadway standing ovation now springs from duty not desire.... If that passion exists more in the audience for The Lord of the Rings than for contemporary Broadway musicals, well, at least it is alive somewhere. (2003) |
Brendan | Lemon | http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html |
| General |
If no single reason can fully account for the lack of great work on Broadway these days, there is a factor in the discussion that is rarely mentioned but which has a bearing on what gets produced: the audience. . . It's not audience intelligence that has waned; it's audience passion -- the pro forma Broadway standing ovation now springs from duty not desire. . . If that passion exists more in the audience for The Lord of the Rings than for contemporary Broadway musicals, well, at least it is alive somewhere. |
Brendan | Lemon | http://www.curtainup.com/timelyquotes.html |
| Acting, Directing, General |
Although the theater is not life, it is composed of fragments or imitations of life, and people on both sides of the footlight have to unite to make the fragments whole and the imitations genuine. |
Brooks | Atksinson | |
| General, Playwriting |
Good plays drive bad playgoers crazy. |
Brooks | Atkinson | Theatre Arts Aug 56 |
| Acting |
The "magic if" is a tool invented by Stanislavski, the father of acting craft, is to help an actor make appropriate choices. Essentially, the "magic if" refers to the answer to the question, "What would I do if I were this character in this situation?" Note that the question is not "What would I do if I were in this situation?" What you would do may be very different from what the character would do. Your job, based on your analysis of the script, the scene, and the given circumstances regarding the who of your character, is to decide what he or she would do. |
Bruce | Miller | Acting on the Script (2014) |
| Acting |
Onstage, you just have to tell the absolute truth about the character you are playing. You hope you communicate it, and you hope it comes back like a tennis ball. If you're listening to the sound of your own voice, nobody else is. The audience knows, and they freeze on you. |
Carol | Channing | It Happened On Broadway |
| 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 |
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 |
| Management, Volunteers |
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. |
Charles | Schwab | |
| 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 |
| Acting |
Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut. |
Charles | Laughton | Wikipedia (under Bette Davis) |
| Acting |
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting. |
Charles | Chaplin |
