Theatre Quotes | Page 9 | AACT

Theatre Quotes

Words to the Wise
Quotations from a wide range of theatrical perspectives

For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.

Displaying 321 - 360 of 421. Show 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 60 results per page.
Category Quote First Last Source
Playwriting

Good drama must be drastic.

Friedrich Schlegel
General

Good theater anywhere is good for theater everywhere.

Frank Schneeberger www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html
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
Acting

The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor.

Paul Scofield The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
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

The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature. [Hamlet]

William Shakespeare The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author--or some other author--to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.

George Bernard Shaw Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Critics

People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.

George Bernard Shaw http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html
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
Playwriting

I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience -- it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan http://www.brainyquote.com/
Acting

To go into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum. Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are admitted.

Michael Shurtleff Audition
Playwriting

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

Neil Simon It Happened On Broadway
Playwriting

Once after Barefoot In the Park had been playing for about a week I went back to see it, watching the audience, which was just falling over laughing except for one guy sitting the aisle. I was transfixed. I said to myself, there seems to be no way to get to him. No one else would I watch except this one man. My wife joined me about 20 minutes later and asked me how it was going, and I said, terrible. I really meant it. There was no way to get to this man. It destroyed me.

Neil Simon Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers On Theater
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
Fundraising

Donors don't give to institutions. They invest in ideas and people in whom they believe.

G.T. Smith http://www.museummarketingtips.com/quotes/giving.html
General

You have two kinds of shows on Broadway -- revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is -- a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture.

Stephen Sondheim NY Times 3/12/00
Acting

A fool cannot be an actor, though an actor may act a fool's part.

Sophocles http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/acting_t003.htm
Acting, Musical Theatre

A lot of the actresses who have had most impact in musicals have been character actresses. And character is an essential ingredient of the best shows. In Merrily We Roll Along, for instance, I got to play a character with such a marvellous span - from boozy, fat, cynical 45-year-old to an 18-year-old in love with life ... I'd rather see her [Dame Judi Dench] do a musical than anyone with 10 times the voice.

Samantha Spiro London Sunday Times Culture Magazine, 25.3.01
Directing

This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"]

Alan Stambusky
Acting

There are no small parts, there are only small actors.

Konstantin Stanislavksy The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting, Directing

All action in theatre must have inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real.

Constantin Stanislavski
Acting

Play well, or play badly, but play truly.

Konstantin Stanislavsky Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Acting

The main difference between the art of the actor and all other arts is that every other [non-performing] artist may create whenever he is in the mood of inspiration. But the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theatre. This is the chief secret of our art.

Konstantin Stanislavsky The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Lighting

In a circle of light on the stage in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone. . . . This is called solitude in public. . . . You can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell.

Konstantin Stanislavsky The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting

Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth.

Konstantin Stanislavsky http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/acting_t004.htm
Acting

The important talent is the talent to develop one's talent.

Howard Stein The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting, Directing, General

In creating and performing in a play, there is a sense of common purpose, of living something outside of yourself, of hauling to one common goal. All these different artistic disciplines are corralled into one purpose, and in the process, incredibly strong bonds are created.

Eric Stern It Happened On Broadway
General

The cast, staff, and crew of a live theater work together toward a common goal: a good performance. Thus, theater is necessarily a group effort. However, it is never a group effort of vague fellow committee members, but of associated autocrats--a playwright, a producer, a director, a stage manager, designers, and, above all, actors. Each accommodates the others, and may overlap others in function when necessary. But each autocrat assumes distinct responsibilities and accepts them completely.

Lawrence Stern Stage Management
Backstage

There is no definitive list of the duties of a stage manager that is applicable to all theaters and staging environments. Regardless of specific duties, however, the stage manager is the individual who accepts responsibility for the smooth running of rehearsals and performances, on stage and backstage.

Lawrence Stern Stage Management
Acting, Directing, General

You can't make theater happen without actors. The actor is the central ingredient in making theater happen. Audiences may come to theaters to see the work of stage managers, directors and producers, but the only people who can communicate theater magic to audiences, through ideas and emotions, are the actors. They are the only ones who can communicate this by themselves, and if necessary, they can get along without you. But you can't make theater without the actor.

Lawrence Stern Stage Management
Acting, Backstage, Directing, General

The director is responsible for interpreting the playwright's work through the cast with the help of the staff. It is the director's artistic concept of the play that the cast, staff, and crew work to obtain.

Lawrence Stern Stage Management
Backstage

An interesting difference between new and experienced stage managers is that the new stage manager thinks of running the show as the most difficult and most demanding part of the job, whereas the experienced stage manager thinks of it as the most relaxing part. Perhaps the reason is that experienced stage managers have built up work habits that make then so thoroughly prepared for the production phase that they [can] sit back during performances to watch that preparation pay off.

Lawrence Stern Stage Management
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
Playwriting

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."]

Tom Stoppard http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre
Acting, Directing

Audiences know what to expect. . . and that is all they are prepared to believe in.

Tom Stoppard www.angelfire.com/dc/musicthea/Quotes.html
Acting

Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose.

Lee Strasberg The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting

Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.

Lee Strasberg
Acting

Acting is the most personal of our crafts. The make-up of a human being - his physical, mental and emotional habits - influence his acting to a much greater extent than commonly recognized.

Lee Strasberg
Acting

A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.

Lee Strasberg
Acting

The actor creates with his own flesh and blood all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe.

Lee Strasberg

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