Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Costumes |
If you do a certain amount of work on your own before consulting with the director then the process starts with the script. I tend to do a certain amount of my own work before I go into a first meeting. It is important to be open minded in your first meeting with a director but I like to be well-prepared for that meeting because sometimes that time with your director can be limited. At the time of that first meeting, I will have read the play several times and from different points of view. I might read the play once to just check how many costume changes there are. I will read it again to make a prop list. I will read it again to analyse where the entrances and exits are and also to imagine where the furniture will be. It's difficult to concentrate on all of these things in one reading so I go through these processes in separate readings. Once you have that under your belt, depending on the period of the production, I guess I start to do visual research based on my response to the text. Depending on where and when I might choose to look at photography of the period or I might choose to look at painting or I might just look at history books and look for thematic influences. That's the start and having done that you team up with your director and see what their response is to those ideas you have and then you start to form a stronger direction. [Christina Poddubiuk, Set and Costume designer] |
Christina | Poddubiuk | http://www.artsalive.ca |
Costumes, Set Design |
I think the best shows are always the ones where the elements come together very well and where the intention is realized. These are the shows in which what you set out do is what you end up with. Through very fortunate circumstances, like the combination of a good director, a good cast, and other people designing, you all manage to end up at the point that you intended when you started out. Nothing is ever perfect and there are always things that you'd perhaps do differently but I think that as long as you get a sense of fulfillment from a show then it is going to be a good experiences. [Christina Poddubiuk, Set and Costume designer] |
Christina | Poddubiuk | http://www.artsalive.ca |
Set Design |
I want everyone to feel as much as possible as if they inhabit the same space. They more fluid the relationship between actor and audience, the better. |
Christine | Jones | http://www.amrep.org/articles/5_2b/creating.html |
Set Design |
I have a large personal collection of pictures. For every project, I choose images. Usually I don't do this until I've done an extensive script breakdown and distilled the text down to poetic form. I have to plant enough seeds so that there will be vibration. |
Christine | Jones | http://www.amrep.org/articles/5_2b/creating.html |
Set Design |
If I weren't a theatre designer, I wouldn't be any other kind of designer. Design is interesting to me as it relates to narrative: the design has to support the narrative. Storytelling is the most important thing. |
Christine | Jones | http://www.amrep.org/articles/5_2b/creating.html |
Acting |
As an actor, you can't play the tragedy. You can only play the choices, the intentions of your character. |
Christine | Andreas | Notes for CD "The Garland Variations" |
Playwriting |
In my plays I want to look at life -- at the commonplace of existence -- as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time. |
Christopher | Fry | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Acting |
A good actor makes clear the meaning of the words. A better actor gives also the emotion of the part. The best actor adds emotion of which the character is unconscious. |
Clare | Eames | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
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? |
Clive | Barnes | |
Shakespeare |
Brush up your Shakespeare |
Cole | Porter | Kiss Me, Kate (musical) |
Acting, Directing |
All action in theatre must have inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real. |
Constantin | Stanislavski | |
Acting |
The secret of staying fresh in a show is to remember that the audience you're playing for that night has never seen it before. |
Danny | Kaye | |
General, Playwriting |
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect. |
David | Mamet | |
Set Design |
A ground plan is important in terms of its rigor. If your plan is soggy and weak, your production will be soggy and weak. |
David | Hays | http://www.emerson.edu/emersontoday/index.cfm?action=3&articleID=678&editionID=45 |
Playwriting |
I've taught both screenwriting and playwriting, and playwriting is both much harder and much more rewarding. One can teach people how to tell a story in cinematic ways, but theater is a much more elusive craft. |
David | Ives | http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/david_ives.html |
General, Playwriting |
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. |
David | Hare | |
Playwriting |
A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten. |
David | Mamet | |
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. |
David | Ball | Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays | |
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 |
Playwriting |
Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case. |
David | Mamet | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does. |
David | Rubenstein | |
Acting, Playwriting |
It is the writer's job to make the play interesting. It is the actor's job to make the performance truthful. |
David | Mamet | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Lighting |
Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light. |
David | Belasco | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General, Management |
I've never quite understood the idea of a "season." Whenever an artistic director says to me, 'I have this slot,' I always start to feel we're parking cars or something. |
David Henry | Hwang | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
There is no greater gift that a person can be given than to be put in touch with his creativity. [Theatre] transformed my life. [Director Declan Donnellan on discovering theatre as a lonely 16 year old.] |
Declan | Donnellan | The Guardian |
Acting |
Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too. |
Donald | Sinden | |
General |
I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life. |
E.M. | Forster | |
Acting |
If you cried a little less, the audience would cry more. |
Edith | Evans | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting, Costumes |
The subjective actress thinks of clothes only as they apply to her; the objective actress thinks of them only as they affect others, as a tool for the job. |
Edith | Head | |
Acting, General, Playwriting |
The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it. |
Edward | Albee | wisdomquotes.com/ |
Playwriting |
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.' |
Edward | Albee | http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html |
Playwriting |
A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage. |
Edward | Albee | http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html |
Acting |
You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
Acting |
Audiences are not strangers to me. They're the best friends I've got in my life. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
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 |
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 | |
Acting |
Onstage, nothing is as important as truth, nothing. As soon as you lie, they know it. |
Elaine | Stritch | It Happened On Broadway |
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/ |
Acting |
Act in your pauses. |
Ellen | Terry | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success upon the stage. And I am still of the same opinion. Imagination, industry [hard work], and intelligence--the three I's--are all indispensable to the actor, but of these three the greatest is, without any doubt, imagination. |
Ellen | Terry | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |