Theatre Quotes | Page 4 | 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 181 - 240 of 421. Show 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 60 results per page.
Category Quote Firstsort descending Last Source
Acting

The theatre has built a whole art round the actor, based on the man and his double - the actor and his character.

Jean-Louis Barrault http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm
Fundraising

If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them.

Jeff Brooks
Acting

You think, you don't just speak. The lines come off the thoughts.

Jeremy Irons American Film magazine
Acting, Directing, General

It is not theatre that is indispensable, but something quite different. To cross the frontiers between you and me.

Jerzy Grotowski
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
Lighting

I think that the first thing that I learned about lighting design was that there are no real rules involved and that as long as I remembered this then my lighting would remain fresh and interesting to me and hopefully to the audience and to the people that I collaborate with.

Jock Munro http://www.artsalive.ca
Lighting

Theatre is interesting because it's a very collaborative process. Typically I'm working with a director, a set designer, a costume designer and a sound designer too. That means that there are a number of perspectives that are brought into any particular script. Typically the director has the final say in where we go conceptually with a piece but we all have an opportunity to influence that direction and typically that direction is based on the script. As such, my studies in english and philosophy have enriched my ability to take a look at a text and react to it in my own way so that I can bring to the table what I consider to be an informed perspective. Then we negotiate the project's process and it's always quite enriching. Projects basically come out of a bond of trust that you have created. As I have progressed throughout my career I have gravitated to people who I feel a common bond with; who I seem to be able to communicate with. We establish a trust and then we go about our project. Very often I will work with someone for three or four years and we will have a particularly creative time and then, for whatever reasons, we will go our separate ways and new bonds will be established. It's an extremely communal approach to the arts. [Lighting designer Jock Munro]

Jock Munro http://www.artsalive.ca
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
Acting

Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

John Wayne Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
General, Playwriting

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

John Mortimer
Acting

Being another character is more interesting than being yourself.

John Gielgud The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting

Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself.

John Gielgud The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Directing

It is very hard to cast a number of plays adequately from the same company of actors without several parts being miscast.

John Gielgud The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
General

This is an extremely foolish and stupid and idiotic kind of attitude--to expect theatres to make money. Do the public schools make money? Do libraries make money? Does the zoo make money? Do the sewers make money? It's a community service.

John Hirsch The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting, Backstage, Directing, General

There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show--all are family.

John Kander It Happened On Broadway
Acting

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.

John Gielgud
Acting

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.

John Heilpern
Critics

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

John Osborne Time, 31 October 1977
General

The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose -- and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization.

John F Kennedy
Costumes

Next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business. [Birdie, in All About Eve]

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

Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you're a king.

Josephine Hull The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Acting, Set Design

I started off as a theatre designer, and by some extraordinary circumstance I saw something in Stratford-upon-Avon, and realized that that's the kind of design I want, but also that that's the kind of designer I'll never be.

Judi Dench http://www.brainyquote.com
Acting

Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously.

Judy Holliday http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/judyhollid227986.html
Lighting

Oftentimes the quality of the light tells the story: the time of day, the weather, whether sun is streaming through the window. It can also help you appreciate what the actor is feeling, what the playwright wants you to feel. Any engineer can put a spot on someone.

Jules Fisher It Happened On Broadway
Lighting

Lighting is not about function. It's much more about the mood and the emotion that the playwright and the director are trying to create. Our job is to support their poetic direction.

Jules Fisher It Happened On Broadway
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
Set Design

Theatrical design is different from many other art forms in that it is a collaborative art. No one theatre artist works independently to create a performance.

Kaoime Malloy The Art of Theatrical Design
Costumes

The moment an actor walks on stage, an impression is made. The audience immediately gains crucial information, both about the production as a whole and the character. A costume is a transformation garment, one that assists an actor to beomce, for a time, someone else.

Kaoime Malloy The Art of Theatrical Design
Acting

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.

Kate Reid http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting
Backstage

Beat to fit, paint to match.

Kate Bolgrien http://www.denagy.com/techiejokes/tjokes.html
Acting

What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin.

Katherine Hepburn Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Acting

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.

Katherine Hepburn http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting
Fundraising

In good times and bad, we know that people give because you meet needs, not because you have needs.

Kay Grace http://www.museummarketingtips.com/quotes/giving.html
Volunteers

Volunteers will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no volunteers.

Ken Wyman
Acting, Directing, General, Playwriting

You need three things in the theatre -- the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something.

Kenneth Haigh http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm
Playwriting

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist.

Kenneth Tynan The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Critics

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.

Kenneth Tynan New York Times Magazine, Jan 9. 1966
General

No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.

Kenneth Tynan http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/kenneth_tynan.html
Critics, Playwriting

The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.

Kenneth Tynan http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/kenneth_tynan.html
General

In is down, down is front. Out is up, up is back. Off is out, on is in. And of course, left is right and right is left. A drop shouldn't and a 'block and fall' does neither. A prop doesn't and a cove has no water. Tripping is okay. A running crew rarely gets anywhere . A purchase line buys you nothing. A trap will not catch anything. A gridiron has nothing to do with football. Strike is work (in fact, a lot of work). And a green room, thank God, usually isn't. Now that you're fully versed in theatrical terms, break a leg.

But not really.

Kerry Chafin https://suite.io/kerry-chafin/2nhw2w1
Acting, Shakespeare

Playing Shakespeare requires technique. You don't play a Bach toccata by getting in the mood.

Kevin Kline The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Musical Theatre

In musical theater you have to be very big and very animated, while film and television are more toned down.

Kevin Richardson http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/kevinricha292397.html
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
Acting

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

Konstantin Stanislavksy 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
General, Musical Theatre, Playwriting

If Hitler's still alive, I hope he's out of town with a musical. [variously attributed]

Larry Gelbart http://povonline.com/Hitler%20Line.htm
Acting

Have a very good reason for everything you do.

Laurence Olivier Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Acting

Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.

Laurence Olivier Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Acting

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

Laurence Olivier Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Acting

I have to act to live.

Laurence Olivier http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre
Acting

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.

Laurence Olivier
Acting

When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.

Laurence Olivier Theatre Arts May 58
Acting

Acting is an everlasting search for truth.

Laurence Olivier http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html
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

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