Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
| Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting |
Onstage, you just have to tell the absolute truth about the character you are playing. You hope you communicate it, and you hope it comes back like a tennis ball. If you're listening to the sound of your own voice, nobody else is. The audience knows, and they freeze on you. |
Carol | Channing | It Happened On Broadway |
| Acting |
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting. |
Charles | Chaplin | |
| 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 |
| Playwriting |
The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard. |
Anton | Chekhov | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Playwriting |
I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage. |
Anton | Chekhov | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Playwriting |
A good play tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad play tells us the truth about its author. |
G.K. | Chesterton | http://www.ag.wastholm.net/category/art |
| Backstage, Management |
Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand. |
Chinese Proverb | ||
| Costumes |
Why don't I just give you some money, then you can buy whatever you want to wear on stage. You obviously want a shopper, and I am merely a designer. [said to an uncooperative actress during a costume fitting] |
Nan | Cibula-Jenkins | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
| Critics, Playwriting |
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping. |
Jean | Cocteau | |
| Acting |
Whatever you do kid, always serve it with a little dressing. |
George M. | Cohan | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
| Fundraising |
Appreciation can make a day--even change a life, Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. |
Margaret | Cousins | http://www.museummarketingtips.com/quotes/giving.html |
| Acting |
In the first act, you get the audience's attention - once you have it, they will repay you in the second. Play through the laughs if you have to. It will only make the audience believe there are so many of them that they missed a few. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
| Acting |
You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don't bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
| 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 |
Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control. |
Noel | Coward | |
| Critics |
I have always been very fond of them . . . I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
| Acting |
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 | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
| General |
The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
| Acting |
Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
| Acting |
Of course, the age-old tradition that a star must appear even if he or she is practically dying is an excellent one, but it can be carried too far. I one played a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle with a temperature of 103 and gave sixteen members of the company mumps, thereby closing the play and throwing everybody out of work. There may be a moral lurking somewhere in this, but I cannot for the life of me discover what it is. |
Noel | Coward | www.musicals101.com/noelquot.htm |
