Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Acting |
I learned acting by doing it. And although I had never taken an acting class, it didn't take long to learn how to be on the stage. All you have to do is to be humiliated in front of an audience a few times. If you don't like being humiliated publicly, you learn how to act. |
Ron | Vawter | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Musical Theatre |
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. |
Oscar | Hammerstein | |
Playwriting |
I haven't really written my plays and books -- I've heard them. The stories are there already, singing in your genes and in your blood. |
Sebastian | Barry | |
Acting |
I have to act to live. |
Laurence | Olivier | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
Acting |
I have no intention of uttering my last words on the stage. Room service and a couple of depraved young women will do me quite nicely for an exit. |
Peter | O'Toole | |
Playwriting |
I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people, really. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
Critics |
I have always been very fond of them . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
Playwriting |
I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
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 |
General, Lighting |
I find that kids who take conventional approaches whereby they study in theatre schools and then become assistants to established artists at various reputed institutions like Stratford and the National Arts Centre have a kind of fast-track to the knowledge process. Very often they become very useful to the institutions for their knowledge. At the same time they are often are denied the fundamental experiences that you get when you are actually producing your own theatre and making decisions yourself among your own peers. I think it's really important to place more emphasis on that than on getting a formal training. You can probably successfully, after you've gotten the buzz and you've become intoxicated if you want to enhance your knowledge in certain areas then it's worthwhile to go back to the institutions and find a niche. I found my niche though being a stagehand. You can be an assistant. You can be a production assistant. I think the key is to be around people who really, truly love what they are doing first, although they might not necessarily know what they are doing. [Lighting designer Jock Munro] |
Jock | Munro | http://www.artsalive.ca |
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 | |
Musical Theatre |
I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. I feel the actors are being put through a kind of nightmarish labor. They're like animals being forced to pull heavy carts of vegetables at incredible speeds. |
Wallace | Shawn | http://www.curtainup.com/timelyquotes.html |
Acting |
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. |
Arsenio | Hall | |
Acting |
I don't make mistakes, I have unintentional improvisations. |
Anonymous | ||
Acting |
I don't care if people think I'm an overactor. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter. |
Jim | Carey | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html |
Acting |
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. |
Bette | Davis | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
General |
I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances -- the curtains were up. |
Groucho | Marx | http://www.ag.wastholm.net/category/art |
Management, Volunteers |
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. |
Charles | Schwab | |
Playwriting |
I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself. |
Tennessee | Williams | http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/playwriting_quotes.html |
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 | |
General |
How do you teach someone that a theatre comes about first as an idea, from an individual who has a philosophy and a passion? That a theatre's idea is its heart and individual soul? That the person who creates it must have the desire not only to create work, but also to create the conditions in which that work can live--and in which others can do it as well? How do you teach someone to want to be a midwife as well as a mother. |
Robert | Kalfin | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Having talent is like having blue eyes. You don't admire a man for the colour of his eyes. I admire a man for what he does with his talent. |
Anthony | Quinn | Sunday Express, 1960 |
Acting |
Have a very good reason for everything you do. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting, Shakespeare |
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. |
Peter | Hall | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Critics |
Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good. |
P.G. | Wodehouse | New York Mirror, 27th May 1955 |
General |
Good theater anywhere is good for theater everywhere. |
Frank | Schneeberger | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html |
General, Playwriting |
Good plays drive bad playgoers crazy. |
Brooks | Atkinson | Theatre Arts Aug 56 |
Playwriting |
Good drama must be drastic. |
Friedrich | Schlegel | |
Acting |
Good actors are good because of the things they can tell us without talking. When they are talking they are the slaves of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor. |
Cedric | Hardwicke | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, General |
God comes to us in theater [in] the way we communicate with each other, whether it be a symphony orchestra, or a wonderful ballet, or a beautiful painting, or a play. It's a way of expressing our humanity. |
Julie | Harris | Christian Science Monitor 15 May 79 |
Fundraising |
Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving. |
Hank | Russo | |
Acting |
For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros. |
Ethel | Barrymore | George Jean Nathan: The Theatre in the Fifties |
Acting |
First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent. |
Michael | Caine | |
General |
Festivals promote the improvement of theater. They give theater people the opportunity to meet, to present their dramatic skills and see what their fellow theater workers are doing (and how well). They offer opportunities for exchange of ideas, competition, and social contact. Participants get a chance to go on the road, to play in an unfamiliar environment. They have an opportunity to evaluate themselves by the reactions of judges and a new audience. Participants may also measure themselves by comparison to the other groups entered. Festivals often result in joyful, stimulating, exciting, and rewarding experiences. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
General, Playwriting |
Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute. |
John | Mortimer | |
Playwriting |
Failure in the theatre is more dramatic and uglier than in any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty. |
Lillian | Hellman | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Set Design |
Everything placed in the performance space, with the characters, creates a context for their story. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Playwriting |
Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. |
Rod | Serling | http://www.brainyquote.com |
Acting |
Every performer has moments of self doubt. The great ones, however,overcome every obstacle to reach their full artistic potential. It takes talent, to be sure, but it also takes a personality that simply will not settle for second best. That's what makes us respect the effort and admire the results. |
Unknown | www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html | |
Acting |
Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live. |
Shelley | Winters |