Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
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 |
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 |
Playwriting |
It's no use to go and take courses in playwriting any more than it's much use taking courses in acting. Better play to a bad matinee in Hull - it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction. Come to think of it, I never did play to a good matinee in Hull . . . |
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 |
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 |
She stopped the show--but then the show wasn't traveling very fast. |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Fundraising |
You cannot expect people to give to you on an annual basis if they have never heard of your organization or are unaware of what you do in the community and why it is so important. As part of this annual giving plan, your board of directors (with staff help) needs to have a time of brainstorming so you can identify all your “target markets” i.e. those people with whom you need to establish a relationship. |
NonprofitExpert.com | http://www.nonprofitexpert.com/annualgiving.htm | |
Playwriting |
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. |
Henrik | Ibsen | http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/playwriting_quotes.html |
Playwriting |
I can't expose a human weakness on the stage unless I know it through having it myself. |
Tennessee | Williams | http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/playwriting_quotes.html |
Playwriting |
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking. |
August | Wilson | http://www.notable-quotes.com/p/playwriting_quotes.html |
Playwriting |
White male playwrights' works continue to dominate production slates. Sometimes it seems easier for them to have the texts of their driver's licenses produced than for the female or non-white playwright to have her best play produced. The reality is, they are more often given that all-important opportunity to fail than the women's play or ethnic play. |
Velina Hasu | Houston | http://www.pubinfo.vcu.edu/artweb/playwriting/quotes.html |
Acting |
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. |
Bette | Davis | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
Acting |
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion. |
Kate | Reid | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
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 |
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. |
Oscar | Wilde | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
Acting |
Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. |
Ralph | Richardson | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
Acting |
The theatre has built a whole art round the actor, based on the man and his double - the actor and his character. |
Jean-Louis | Barrault | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Acting |
An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow. |
Lawrence | Barrett | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Acting |
Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretive one. |
Paul | Newman | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Acting, Directing, General, Playwriting |
You need three things in the theatre -- the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something. |
Kenneth | Haigh | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Playwriting |
In my plays I want to look at life -- at the commonplace of existence -- as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time. |
Christopher | Fry | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Playwriting |
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost. |
Arthur | Miller | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Costumes |
Before a character even speaks, we 'read' their appearance through their costume. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Set Design |
Designers play with scale and proportion, making the ordinary extraordinary by taking an object out of context and changing its scale in relation to the characters' size and appearance. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
Set Design |
Everything placed in the performance space, with the characters, creates a context for their story. |
Peter Ruthven | Hall | http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/events.htm |
General |
The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art. |
Roman | Rolland | http://www.wisdomportal.com/Quotes |
Acting |
My playground was the theatre. I'd sit and watch my mother pretend for a living. As a young girl, that's pretty seductive. |
Gwyneth | Paltrow | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
Critics, General |
Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment. It is a criticism. |
Alan Jay | Lerner | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
General |
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. |
Oscar | Wilde | http://www.worldofquotes.com |
General |
In is down, down is front. Out is up, up is back. Off is out, on is in. And of course, left is right and right is left. A drop shouldn't and a 'block and fall' does neither. A prop doesn't and a cove has no water. Tripping is okay. A running crew rarely gets anywhere . A purchase line buys you nothing. A trap will not catch anything. A gridiron has nothing to do with football. Strike is work (in fact, a lot of work). And a green room, thank God, usually isn't. Now that you're fully versed in theatrical terms, break a leg. But not really. |
Kerry | Chafin | https://suite.io/kerry-chafin/2nhw2w1 |
Acting, General, Playwriting |
The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it. |
Edward | Albee | wisdomquotes.com/ |
A play is a series of actions. A play is not about action, nor does it describe action. Is a fire about flames? Does it describe flames? No, a fire is flames. A play is action. Why do you think actors are called actors? And action in a play occurs when something happens that makes or permits something else to happen. |
David | Ball | Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays | |
Management |
In community theatres, "doers" seem to do the following: act, direct, choreograph, accompany, design, build, find, sew, sell, or usher. "Managers" plan, organize, staff, supervise and evaluate. Doers, like directors and crew chiefs, also "manage," and managers like stage managers also sometimes "do"--find props, paint sets, or hang lights. Leaders can also be managers and/or doers, but in their leadership capacity their activities include these: dreaming, pushing, causing to grow, problem-solving and inspiring. Their qualities of intelligence, imagination, commitment, perseverance, and passion are the very qualities that invite the rest of us to say "Yes!" |
Twink | Lynch | Boards In the Spotlight, p. 95 |
Acting |
Never get caught acting. |
Lillian | Gish | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
If you cried a little less, the audience would cry more. |
Edith | Evans | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Have a very good reason for everything you do. |
Laurence | Olivier | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |
Acting |
Play well, or play badly, but play truly. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur |