Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Musical Theatre |
Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math! |
Nathan | Lane | http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/musical_theater |
Costumes |
Why don't I just give you some money, then you can buy whatever you want to wear on stage. You obviously want a shopper, and I am merely a designer. [said to an uncooperative actress during a costume fitting] |
Nan | Cibula-Jenkins | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick. |
Moss | Hart | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own. |
Moss | Hart | |
Acting, Directing |
The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny. |
Mike | Nichols | |
Acting |
All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it. |
Mike | Nichols | |
Directing |
Most directors work from inside out and from the outside in. They concentrate not only on the life of the characters but also on the play's structrual or external elements, including its central conflict, function, event, architecture, and suspense. |
Michael | Bloom | Thinking Like a Director: A Practical Handbook |
Acting |
I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point. |
Michael | Caine | Film Yearbook, 1985 |
Directing |
In the most basic terms, the director is a production's primary storyteller. A play has only one plot (including subplots), but it contains many potential stories. The interpretation of the primary characters largely determines the story, so in effect, every production of the same play will inevitably tell a different tale. One of the most important functions a director fulfills is determining, with the actors and designers, which story to tell and how to tell it coherently. |
Michael | Bloom | Thinking Like a Director: A Practical Handbook |
Directing |
The truth is that there is no one accepted method for directing, any more than there is for any other art. How a director fares is greatly dependent on who that person is, his collaborators, and the project at hand. To complicate matters, the relationship between product and process isnt't always a direct and causal one. Some directors work themselves to the bone, while others do very little. Paradoxically, they achieve successes and failures in both categories. But it would be naive not to believe that most successful productions occur because of the intensive efforts of a skilled director. |
Michael | Bloom | Thinking Like a Director: A Practical Handbook |
Acting |
To go into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum. Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are admitted. |
Michael | Shurtleff | Audition |
Acting |
First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent. |
Michael | Caine | |
Playwriting |
Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong. |
Meredith | Willson | |
Playwriting |
A good play is a play which when acted upon the boards make an audience interested and pleased. A play that fails in this is a bad play. |
Maurice | Baring | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
Acting, Directing, General |
Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place. |
Martha | Graham | Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance, by Roger Copeland (Routledge Books) |
General, Playwriting |
Theater is so critical because it has always been able to release people from their isolation... The theater is a communal event, church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is just the longings of one heart. |
Marsha | Norman | |
Acting |
Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are. |
Marlon | Brando | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't, or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age. |
Marlon | Brando | Newsweek, 13 March 1972 |
Acting |
Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis. |
Marlon | Brando | |
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 |