Theatre Quotes

All the world's a stage. Some of us just have better seats.

All action in theatre must have inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real.

Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is fifty percent of the performance.

Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

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.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretive one.

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Acting is mostly about listening. If you just focus in on what the other person is saying, acting takes care of itself to quite a large extent.

Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself.

Acting is an everlasting search for truth.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Acted drama requires surrender of one's self, sympathetic absorption in the play as it develops.

Act in your pauses.

A statement of vision is the overarching purpose, the big dream, the visionary concept--something presently out of reach--so stated that it excites the imagination and chlalenges people to work for something they do not yet know how to do.

A playwright is the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.

A play is a series of actions. A play is not about action, nor does it describe action. Is a fire about flames? Does it describe flames? No, a fire is flames. A play is action. Why do you think actors are called actors? And action in a play occurs when something happens that makes or permits something else to happen.