Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote |
First |
Last | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting |
Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much. |
John | Wayne | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Acting |
Being another character is more interesting than being yourself. |
John | Gielgud | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting, Backstage, Directing, General |
There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show--all are family. |
John | Kander | It Happened On Broadway |
| General, Playwriting |
Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute. |
John | Mortimer | |
| Directing |
It is very hard to cast a number of plays adequately from the same company of actors without several parts being miscast. |
John | Gielgud | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Acting |
One mustn't allow acting to be like stockbroker -- you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement. |
John | Gielgud | |
| Acting |
Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself. |
John | Gielgud | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Critics |
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs. |
John | Osborne | Time, 31 October 1977 |
| General |
The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose -- and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization. |
John F | Kennedy | |
| Costumes |
Next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business. [Birdie, in All About Eve] |
Joseph | Mankiewicz | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
