Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Acting |
Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture. |
Spencer | Tracy | 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 |
Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Pray to God and say the lines. |
Bette | Davis | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Act in your pauses. |
Ellen | Terry | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
If you want to help the American theatre, don't be an actress, be an audience. |
Tallulah | Bankhead | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
When you go into the professional world, at a stock theater somewhere, backstage you will meet an older actor--someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes about life in the theater. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man. |
Sanford | Meisner | 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 |
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 |
Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are. |
Marlon | Brando | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much. |
John | Wayne | 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 |
If you achieve success, you will get applause. Enjoy it--but never quite believe it. |
Robert | Montgomery | 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 |
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 |
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 |
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, Playwriting |
A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor. |
Eric | Bentley | In Search of Theater |
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, 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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Acting |
Onstage, nothing is as important as truth, nothing. As soon as you lie, they know it. |
Elaine | Stritch | It Happened On Broadway |
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 |
Shakespeare |
Brush up your Shakespeare |
Cole | Porter | Kiss Me, Kate (musical) |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
The important talent is the talent to develop one's talent. |
Howard | Stein | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model. |
George | Lewes | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
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 |
Acting |
When actors go onstage, you know immediately if they can do their job. You can be a lawyer or an accountant for years and not find out. |
Patsy | Rodenburg | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
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, 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 |
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 |
Being another character is more interesting than being yourself. |
John | Gielgud | 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 |
Acting |
It is widely acknowledged to be the toughest job to get any two acting teachers to agree about anything. |
Robert | Lewis | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Directing |
The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays. |
Stella | Adler | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |