Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First |
Last |
Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting |
Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/acting_t004.htm |
| Acting |
Play well, or play badly, but play truly. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| 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, Directing |
All action in theatre must have inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real. |
Constantin | Stanislavski | |
| Acting |
There are no small parts, there are only small actors. |
Konstantin | Stanislavksy | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Directing |
This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"] |
Alan | Stambusky | |
| Acting, Musical Theatre |
A lot of the actresses who have had most impact in musicals have been character actresses. And character is an essential ingredient of the best shows. In Merrily We Roll Along, for instance, I got to play a character with such a marvellous span - from boozy, fat, cynical 45-year-old to an 18-year-old in love with life ... I'd rather see her [Dame Judi Dench] do a musical than anyone with 10 times the voice. |
Samantha | Spiro | London Sunday Times Culture Magazine, 25.3.01 |
| Acting |
A fool cannot be an actor, though an actor may act a fool's part. |
Sophocles | http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/acting_t003.htm | |
| General |
You have two kinds of shows on Broadway -- revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is -- a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture. |
Stephen | Sondheim | NY Times 3/12/00 |
| Diversity & Inclusion, Playwriting |
There are so many ambiguous expectations of what a “Latino play” must do, and how it must represent its people, none of which match the reality of their lived experiences. But that’s what happens when people deal with “the Other”. They tend to want it to conform to preconceived notions, or to glamorize or exoticize it. I’m just interested in showing Latinos as people with the same capacities to succeed or fail in their lives like anyone else. |
Octavio | Solis |
The Rumpus Interview with Octavio Solis. February 1, 2013 [ https://therumpus.net/2013/02/01/the-rumpus-interview-with-octavio-solis/ ] |
