Theatre Quotes

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

The world's a theater, the earth a stage,
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible, irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material, sensational -- and probably sexual.

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.

Failure in the theatre is more dramatic and uglier than in any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

A cat actually thinks visibly. If you watch him jump on a shelf, the wish to jump and the action of jumping are one and the same thing... It's in exactly the same way that all Brook's exercises try to train the actor. The actor is trained to become so organically related within himself, he thinks completely with his body. He becomes one sensitive, responding whole... The whole of him is one.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

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

The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

My process is that I will read the play a couple of times and then not do anything until I've spoken with the director, because, of course, there are 500 different ways a play can look--and still honor every word that's in those stage directions. I don't want to think about how it works until I know what the director is interested in, and if the playwright is around, what they're thinking about as they've written it. Then I go away and do my research.

Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own.

The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.

Has anyone understood that the basic thing about Elizabethan theatre is that it was played in daylight? The actor saw the eyes of the audience.

Before a character even speaks, we 'read' their appearance through their costume.

Everything placed in the performance space, with the characters, creates a context for their story.
What is the shape of the space?
How do the shapes and colours within the space relate to the characters?
How do they 'frame' them?
What comments do the frames make about the characters and their worlds?

I don't possess a lot of self-confidence. I'm an actor so I simply act confident every time I hit the stage. I am consumed with the fear of failing. Reaching deep down and finding confidence has made all my dreams come true.

Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen.

Once in awhile, there's stuff that makes me say, That's what theatre's about. It has to be a human event on the stage, and that doesn't happen very often.