Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote |
First |
Last | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General |
The theater has to impose itself on the public, and not the public on the theater... The word "Art" should be written everywhere, in the auditorium and in the dressing rooms, before the word "Business" gets written there. |
Federico Garcia | Lorca | |
| General |
A nation that does not support and encourage its theater is -- if not dead -- dying; just as a theater that does not capture with laughter and tears the social and historical pulse, the drama of its people, the genuine color of the spiritual and natural landscape, has no right to call itself theater; but only a place for amusement. |
Federico | Garcia Lorca | http://www.cfa.ilstu.edu/pguithe/THE344/quotes.html |
| Playwriting |
I started writing for the theatre because I hated it. |
Eugene | Ionesco | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting |
For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros. |
Ethel | Barrymore | George Jean Nathan: The Theatre in the Fifties |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| General, Playwriting |
The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name. |
Enid | Bagnold | |
| Directing, Diversity & Inclusion, General, Management |
Ultimately, in order to have theatre reflect the world as it is, the industry must value the artists that it has historically marginalized, and start by redirecting resources to support these artists’ work and lives—a move that could both make theatre a more inclusive space for both artists and audiences. |
Emilyn | Kowaleski |
"Reimagining A Diverse and Inclusive Theatrical Space," Media Diversity Institute [ https://www.media-diversity.org/reimagining-a-diverse-and-inclusive-thea... ] |
