Theatre Quotes

I want to make the audience laugh and cry within ten seconds, to show just how close those emotions are.

Anti-racist theatre is not about doing all the things to end oppression at once; it’s about doing what you can. Small changes in behavior and thinking can have profound impacts on you and your organizational culture. For me, when directing, those small changes have manifested in changing my adherence to the myth that there wasn’t enough time to do the work, which resulted in pleasantries before rehearsal but no time set aside during rehearsal for people to acknowledge one another. Now every rehearsal I lead begins with a check-in to acknowledge what we’re bringing into the room; access needs are shared, and we honor the indigeneity of the land. Through session agreements we collectively define how we want to do the work. I find people appreciate having the space to bring the fullness of themselves to their art making.

I will accept anything in the theatre . . . provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home.

I will accept anything in the theatre . . . provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home.

Of course, the age-old tradition that a star must appear even if he or she is practically dying is an excellent one, but it can be carried too far. I one played a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle with a temperature of 103 and gave sixteen members of the company mumps, thereby closing the play and throwing everybody out of work. There may be a moral lurking somewhere in this, but I cannot for the life of me discover what it is.

She stopped the show--but then the show wasn't traveling very fast.

The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda.

There are so many ambiguous expectations of what a “Latino play” must do, and how it must represent its people, none of which match the reality of their lived experiences. But that’s what happens when people deal with “the Other”. They tend to want it to conform to preconceived notions, or to glamorize or exoticize it. I’m just interested in showing Latinos as people with the same capacities to succeed or fail in their lives like anyone else.

When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited.

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

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.

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

Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process.

The Civic Theater idea, as a distinctive issue, implies the conscious awakening of a people to self-government in the activities of its leisure. To this end, organization of the arts of the theater, participation by the people in these arts not mere spectatorship, a new resulting technique, leadership by means of a permanent staff of artists (not of merchants in art), elimination of private profit by endowment and public support, dedication in the service to the whole community: these are chief among its essentials, and these imply a new and nobler scope for the art of the theater itself. [1912]

I think that first nights should come near the end of a play's run--as indeed, they often do.