Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First | Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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... ] |
| Playwriting |
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings. |
Arthur | Miller | http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller |
| General |
It hath evermore been the notorious badge of prostituted Strumpets and the lewdest Harlots, to ramble abroad to Plays, to Playhouses; whither no honest, chaste or sober Girls or Women, but only branded Whores and infamous Adulteresses, did usually resort in ancient times. |
William | Prynne | http://izquotes.com/ |
| Playwriting |
I write plays for people who wouldn't be seen dead in the theatre. |
Barrie | Keefe | http://izquotes.com/ |
| Acting, Directing |
The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots. |
Alfred | Jarry | http://izquotes.com/ |
| General |
The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout. |
Robert | Holman | http://izquotes.com/ |
| General |
To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner. |
Eleanora | Duse | http://izquotes.com/ |
| General |
Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one. |
Robert | Brustein | http://izquotes.com/ |
| General, Musical Theatre, Playwriting |
If Hitler's still alive, I hope he's out of town with a musical. [variously attributed] |
Larry | Gelbart | http://povonline.com/Hitler%20Line.htm |
| Acting |
I have to act to live. |
Laurence | Olivier | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Acting |
When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. |
Steve | Buscemi | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Playwriting |
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. [A take-off on Oscar Wilde's "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."] |
Tom | Stoppard | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Playwriting |
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships. |
Gore | Vidal | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Playwriting |
A good play is a play which when acted upon the boards make an audience interested and pleased. A play that fails in this is a bad play. |
Maurice | Baring | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| General |
The world's a theater, the earth a stage, |
Thomas | Heywood | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Acting, Directing, General |
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. |
Oscar | Wilde | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| General |
I will accept anything in the theatre . . . provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home. |
Noel | Coward | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Acting |
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;/ 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. |
Oliver | Goldsmith | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
| Musical Theatre |
Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math! |
Nathan | Lane | http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/musical_theater |
| Playwriting |
If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last. |
Anton | Chekhov | http://www.ag.wastholm.net/category/art |
