Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
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 |
Have a very good reason for everything you do. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Play well, or play badly, but play truly. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
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 |
What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin. |
Katherine | Hepburn | 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 |
Lead the audience by the nose to the thought. |
Laurence | Olivier | 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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Management |
In community theatres, "doers" seem to do the following: act, direct, choreograph, accompany, design, build, find, sew, sell, or usher. "Managers" plan, organize, staff, supervise and evaluate. Doers, like directors and crew chiefs, also "manage," and managers like stage managers also sometimes "do"--find props, paint sets, or hang lights. Leaders can also be managers and/or doers, but in their leadership capacity their activities include these: dreaming, pushing, causing to grow, problem-solving and inspiring. Their qualities of intelligence, imagination, commitment, perseverance, and passion are the very qualities that invite the rest of us to say "Yes!" |
Twink | Lynch | Boards In the Spotlight, p. 95 |
A play is a series of actions. A play is not about action, nor does it describe action. Is a fire about flames? Does it describe flames? No, a fire is flames. A play is action. Why do you think actors are called actors? And action in a play occurs when something happens that makes or permits something else to happen. |
David | Ball | Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays | |
Acting, General, Playwriting |
The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it. |
Edward | Albee | wisdomquotes.com/ |
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 |
General |
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. |
Oscar | Wilde | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
Acting |
My playground was the theatre. I'd sit and watch my mother pretend for a living. As a young girl, that's pretty seductive. |
Gwyneth | Paltrow | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
Critics, General |
Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment. It is a criticism. |
Alan Jay | Lerner | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
General |
The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art. |
Roman | Rolland | http://www.wisdomportal.com/Quotes |
Costumes |
Before a character even speaks, we 'read' their appearance through their costume. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Set Design |
Designers play with scale and proportion, making the ordinary extraordinary by taking an object out of context and changing its scale in relation to the characters' size and appearance. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
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 |
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 |
Acting |
Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretive one. |
Paul | Newman | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Acting |
An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow. |
Lawrence | Barrett | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
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 |