Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Playwriting |
It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write. |
Tennessee | Williams | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
Drama should not present new stories but new relationships. |
Frederick | Hessel | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard. |
Anton | Chekhov | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
Playwriting |
If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along. |
Athol | Fugard | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process. |
Paula | Vogel | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Playwriting |
The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression. |
Harold | Pinter | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General, Management |
This is a non-commercial theatre. It's got to be run by a person who sees right from the start that the profits won't be money profits. [On the idea of a Federal Theatre Project, 1934] |
Harry | Hopkins | 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 |
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 |
General, Management |
Someone once said that being an artistic director is the intelligent exercise of one's own taste. And that is what I believe with all my heart and soul. If you start second-guessing yourself in advance, I think you're done for. |
Andre | Bishop | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General, Management |
The artistic director gratifies his special need to relate to people in a highly accentuated paternalistic and maternalistic fashion. |
Philip | Weissman | 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 |
If politics is the art of the possible, theatre is the art of the impossible. |
Herbert | Blau | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman. |
Tallulah | Bankhead | Tallulah: My Autobiography |
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 |
Lighting |
An effective lighting design is like a beautiful painting. Your medium is bringing someone to an emotional state he or she would not achieve at that moment without your art. This does not and can not happen by accident. |
Glen | Cunningham | Stage Lighting Revealed |
Playwriting |
I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced--although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world--what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done. |
Lillian | Hellman | Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers On Theater |
Directing, Musical Theatre |
Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to sing. No one would cast a dancing part with someone who cannot dance sufficiently to come up to professional standards. The same is true of acting. But when it comes to singing, more often than not it is amateur night. . . . Either musicals should be written for specified performers in the first place, or they should be cast with people who are adequate to its dancing, acting and singing demands. |
Ernest | Gold | Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers On Theater |
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 |
Playwriting, Shakespeare |
Shakespeare's plays are bad enough, but yours are even worse. [Tolstoy to Chekov] |
Leo | Tolstoy | Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives, by Joseph Epstein |
General, Musical Theatre |
A flop is often the result of the fact that each of the talents involved, while working on the same project, may in effect have been working on a different show from all the others. If all contributors do not share the same vision of the evening, the end product will not evince the harmony of diverse elements--the seeming inevitability of book, score, and staging--of a good musical. |
Ethan | Mordden | Not Since Carrie |
General, Musical Theatre |
There is a traditional trick that theatre people have played as long as I can remember. A veteran member of a company will order a gullible newcomer to find the key to the curtain. Naturally, the joke is there is no such thing. I have been in the theatre over fifty years, and I don't think anyone would consider me naive, but all my life I've been searching for that key. And I'm still looking. . . . |
Richard | Rodgers | Musical Stages |
Shakespeare |
Brush up your Shakespeare |
Cole | Porter | Kiss Me, Kate (musical) |
Acting |
The fun for me is knowing what the other person is saying and what my character would be thinking at that time. On the stage you get the chance to do all that, to analyze and build a part, to react, to contribute something no one else can--not the author, not even the director. |
Barry | Nelson | It Happened On Broadway |
Acting |
Onstage, nothing is as important as truth, nothing. As soon as you lie, they know it. |
Elaine | Stritch | It Happened On Broadway |
Acting |
Onstage, you just have to tell the absolute truth about the character you are playing. You hope you communicate it, and you hope it comes back like a tennis ball. If you're listening to the sound of your own voice, nobody else is. The audience knows, and they freeze on you. |
Carol | Channing | It Happened On Broadway |
Directing |
Casting is instrumental in helping you understand the play. If you cast it right, as soon as the actor steps on the stage, you get certain impressions that help you understand what the play is about. |
Howard | Kissel | It Happened On Broadway |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Costumes |
Your eyes will always go to red, which is why there is a lady in red in all my shows. |
Florence | Klotz | It Happened On Broadway |
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, 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 |
Acting, Playwriting |
A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor. |
Eric | Bentley | In Search of Theater |
Acting |
If you cried a little less, the audience would cry more. |
Edith | Evans | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Never get caught acting. |
Lillian | Gish | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential. |
Robert | Morley | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Don't use your conscious past, use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little. |
Stella | Adler | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
If you achieve success, you will get applause. Enjoy it--but never quite believe it. |
Robert | Montgomery | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
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 |
Acting |
Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much. |
John | Wayne | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made. |
George | Burns | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are. |
Marlon | Brando | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life. |
Albert | Finney | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is fifty percent of the performance. |
Shirley | Booth | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Lead the audience by the nose to the thought. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Walk in, plant yourself, look the other person in the eye, and tell the truth. |
James | Cagney | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin. |
Katherine | Hepburn | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture. |
Spencer | Tracy | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Whatever you do kid, always serve it with a little dressing. |
George M. | Cohan | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Don't think you're funny. It'll never work if you think you're funny. |
George | Abbott | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Play well, or play badly, but play truly. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |