Theatre Quotes | Page 9 | AACT

Theatre Quotes

Words to the Wise
Quotations from a wide range of theatrical perspectives

For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.

Displaying 161 - 180 of 421. Show 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 60 results per page.
Category Quote First Lastsort descending Source
Set Design

My process is that I will read the play a couple of times and then not do anything until I've spoken with the director, because, of course, there are 500 different ways a play can look--and still honor every word that's in those stage directions. I don't want to think about how it works until I know what the director is interested in, and if the playwright is around, what they're thinking about as they've written it. Then I go away and do my research.

Rachel Hauck Interview with the set designer in Stage Directions magazine, August 2019
Playwriting

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising.

Vaclav Havel
Acting

The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

Helen Hayes
Acting

Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end.

Helen Hayes
Acting

Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

Helen Hayes
Set Design

A ground plan is important in terms of its rigor. If your plan is soggy and weak, your production will be soggy and weak.

David Hays http://www.emerson.edu/emersontoday/index.cfm?action=3&articleID=678&editionID=45
Acting

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

William Hazlitt
Acting, Costumes

The subjective actress thinks of clothes only as they apply to her; the objective actress thinks of them only as they affect others, as a tool for the job.

Edith Head
Acting

A cat actually thinks visibly. If you watch him jump on a shelf, the wish to jump and the action of jumping are one and the same thing... It's in exactly the same way that all Brook's exercises try to train the actor. The actor is trained to become so organically related within himself, he thinks completely with his body. He becomes one sensitive, responding whole... The whole of him is one.

John Heilpern
Playwriting

Failure in the theatre is more dramatic and uglier than in any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

Lillian Hellman The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Playwriting

I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced--although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world--what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done.

Lillian Hellman Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers On Theater
Playwriting

But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. If I write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.

Beth Henley http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/beth_henley.html
Acting

What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin.

Katherine Hepburn Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur
Acting

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Katherine Hepburn http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting
Acting

You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible, irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material, sensational -- and probably sexual.

George Herman

http://quotes.prolix.nu/Art/Theatre

Playwriting

Drama should not present new stories but new relationships.

Frederick Hessel The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
General

The world's a theater, the earth a stage,
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

Thomas Heywood http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre
General

This is an extremely foolish and stupid and idiotic kind of attitude--to expect theatres to make money. Do the public schools make money? Do libraries make money? Does the zoo make money? Do the sewers make money? It's a community service.

John Hirsch The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips
Playwriting

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

Alfred Hitchcock
Acting

Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously.

Judy Holliday http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/judyhollid227986.html

Pages

  • Facebook
  • AACT on Instagram
  • AACT on LinkedIn
Authorize.Net Merchant - Click to Verify Credit Card Merchant Services