Theatre Quotes

One mustn't allow acting to be like stockbroker -- you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.

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.

One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price. I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality.

Definition of Stage Manager: The person who rarely gets credit when everything goes right.

It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.

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.

The play loses a great deal of its meaning if it is robbed of a magic which springs, not from the glittering tip of a department-store wand, but from the earth, the stones, the very air of the wood; and a magic which is not merely pretty but dark and dangerous. [said of A Midsummer Night's Dream

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

Acting expresses a part of the self otherwise hidden to the conscious mind.

I don't see why people want new plays all the time. What would happen to concerts if people wanted new music all the time?

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

I write plays for people who wouldn't be seen dead in the theatre.

The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout.

Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one.

I have to act to live.

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. [A take-off on Oscar Wilde's "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."]

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.

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;/ 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting.