Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Acting |
These performers that go on about their technique and craft - oh, puleeze! How boring! I don't know what 'technique' means. But I do know what experience is. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
Directing |
This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"] |
Alan | Stambusky | |
General, Management |
This is a non-commercial theatre. It's got to be run by a person who sees right from the start that the profits won't be money profits. [On the idea of a Federal Theatre Project, 1934] |
Harry | Hopkins | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
This is an extremely foolish and stupid and idiotic kind of attitude--to expect theatres to make money. Do the public schools make money? Do libraries make money? Does the zoo make money? Do the sewers make money? It's a community service. |
John | Hirsch | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
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 |
General |
To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner. |
Eleanora | Duse | http://izquotes.com/ |
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 |
Acting |
Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Volunteers |
Volunteers will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no volunteers. |
Ken | Wyman | |
Acting |
Walk in, plant yourself, look the other person in the eye, and tell the truth. |
James | Cagney | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
General |
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself. |
Bertolt | Brecht | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html |
Acting |
We've put a man on the moon. If you miss a cue, no one will die. |
Shelli | Aderman | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html |
Acting |
What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin. |
Katherine | Hepburn | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Management |
What constitutes a good manager in this field? He must be knowledgeable in the art with which he is concerned, an impresario, labor negotiator, diplomat, educator, publicity and public relations expert, politician, skilled businessman, a social sophisticate, a servant of the community, a tireless leader -- becomingly humble before authority -- a teacher, a tyrant, and a continuing student of the arts. |
Rockefeller Panel Report | Rockefeller Panel Report: The Performing Arts | |
Acting |
What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up and go home feeling they've wasted their money. |
Laurence | Olivier | |
Acting |
Whatever you do kid, always serve it with a little dressing. |
George M. | Cohan | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
When actors go onstage, you know immediately if they can do their job. You can be a lawyer or an accountant for years and not find out. |
Patsy | Rodenburg | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking. |
August | Wilson | http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/playwriting_quotes.html |
Acting |
When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. |
Steve | Buscemi | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
Lighting, Set Design |
When it's good design, you alone will know. When it's bad design - everyone will tell you! |
Unknown | ||
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 |
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 |
When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part. |
Laurence | Olivier | Theatre Arts May 58 |
Acting, Shakespeare |
When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part. |
Olivier | Laurence | Laurence Olivier |
Acting |
When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play. |
Raul | Esparza | NY Times, 11/26/06 |
Musical Theatre |
Wherever it came from, the musical came with its hair mussed and with an innocent, indolent, irreverent look on its bright, bland face. |
Walter | Kerr | http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/walter_kerr.html |
Playwriting |
White male playwrights' works continue to dominate production slates. Sometimes it seems easier for them to have the texts of their driver's licenses produced than for the female or non-white playwright to have her best play produced. The reality is, they are more often given that all-important opportunity to fail than the women's play or ethnic play. |
Velina Hasu | Houston | http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/quotes.html |
Playwriting |
Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
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 |
Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well. |
David | Ives | http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/david_ives.html |
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 |
You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. |
Ben | Kingsley | |
Acting |
You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
Acting |
You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done. |
Sanford | Meisner | http://www.aldersonstudio.com/quotes/index.html |
Acting, Directing, General |
You can't make theater happen without actors. The actor is the central ingredient in making theater happen. Audiences may come to theaters to see the work of stage managers, directors and producers, but the only people who can communicate theater magic to audiences, through ideas and emotions, are the actors. They are the only ones who can communicate this by themselves, and if necessary, they can get along without you. But you can't make theater without the actor. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
Fundraising |
You cannot expect people to give to you on an annual basis if they have never heard of your organization or are unaware of what you do in the community and why it is so important. As part of this annual giving plan, your board of directors (with staff help) needs to have a time of brainstorming so you can identify all your “target markets” i.e. those people with whom you need to establish a relationship. |
NonprofitExpert.com | http://www.nonprofitexpert.com/annualgiving.htm | |
Acting |
You cannot tell an audience a lie. They know it before you do; before it's out of your mouth, they know it's a lie. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
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 |
General |
You have two kinds of shows on Broadway -- revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is -- a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture. |
Stephen | Sondheim | NY Times 3/12/00 |