Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First | Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playwriting |
I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people, really. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
| Playwriting |
Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
| Playwriting |
I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
| Playwriting |
If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
| Playwriting |
Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. |
Tennessee | Williams | |
| Directing |
This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"] |
Alan | Stambusky | |
| Acting |
All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it. |
Mike | Nichols | |
| Acting, Directing |
The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny. |
Mike | Nichols | |
| Acting |
You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny. |
Elaine | Stritch | |
| Acting |
You cannot tell an audience a lie. They know it before you do; before it's out of your mouth, they know it's a lie. |
Elaine | Stritch |
