Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Musical Theatre |
Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math! |
Nathan | Lane | http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/musical_theater |
Playwriting |
I want to make the audience laugh and cry within ten seconds, to show just how close those emotions are. |
Neil | Simon | It Happened On Broadway |
Playwriting |
Once after Barefoot In the Park had been playing for about a week I went back to see it, watching the audience, which was just falling over laughing except for one guy sitting the aisle. I was transfixed. I said to myself, there seems to be no way to get to him. No one else would I watch except this one man. My wife joined me about 20 minutes later and asked me how it was going, and I said, terrible. I really meant it. There was no way to get to this man. It destroyed me. |
Neil | Simon | Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers On Theater |
Directing, Diversity & Inclusion |
Anti-racist theatre is not about doing all the things to end oppression at once; it’s about doing what you can. Small changes in behavior and thinking can have profound impacts on you and your organizational culture. For me, when directing, those small changes have manifested in changing my adherence to the myth that there wasn’t enough time to do the work, which resulted in pleasantries before rehearsal but no time set aside during rehearsal for people to acknowledge one another. Now every rehearsal I lead begins with a check-in to acknowledge what we’re bringing into the room; access needs are shared, and we honor the indigeneity of the land. Through session agreements we collectively define how we want to do the work. I find people appreciate having the space to bring the fullness of themselves to their art making. |
Nicole | Brewer | American Theatre, September 16, 2019 [ https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/16/why-equity-diversity-and-inclusion-is-obsolete/ ] |
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 | |
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 |
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 |
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/ ] |
Acting |
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;/ 'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. |
Oliver | Goldsmith | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
Acting, Shakespeare |
When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part. |
Olivier | Laurence | Laurence Olivier |
Fundraising |
Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough. |
Oprah | Winfrey | http://www.museummarketingtips.com/quotes/giving.html |
Acting, Directing |
I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act. |
Orson | Welles | |
Acting, Directing, General |
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. |
Oscar | Wilde | http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre |
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, Playwriting |
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. |
Oscar | Wilde | |
Acting |
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. |
Oscar | Wilde | http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/acting |
Musical Theatre |
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it. |
Oscar | Hammerstein | |
General |
The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited. |
Oscar | Hammerstein | |
Set Design |
Eugene Lee is a set designer who's famously said that he hates scenery. The reason it's such a joy to work with him is he's never designing the scenery, he's designing the room in which theater is going to take place. It makes for a much more vibrant conversation about what we're going to work on together. [Oskar Eustis , artistic director of the Public Theater, Boston] |
Oskar | Eustis | http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/01/21/the_joy_of_sets |
Critics |
Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good. |
P.G. | Wodehouse | New York Mirror, 27th May 1955 |
Costumes, Lighting, Set Design |
A play is a painting that moves. Instead of it holding still, and you are looking at it, you hold still and it scrolls by. |
Patricia | Zipprodt | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
When actors go onstage, you know immediately if they can do their job. You can be a lawyer or an accountant for years and not find out. |
Patsy | Rodenburg | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor. |
Paul | Scofield | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretive one. |
Paul | Newman | http://www.satheatre.com/quotes.htm |
Directing |
If you cast wrong, you are in a lot of trouble. |
Paul | Mazursky | Friendly Advice (book) |
Playwriting |
Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process. |
Paula | Vogel | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
I think I'm a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn't want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time. |
Penelope | Keith | http://www.brainyquote.com |
General |
The Civic Theater idea, as a distinctive issue, implies the conscious awakening of a people to self-government in the activities of its leisure. To this end, organization of the arts of the theater, participation by the people in these arts not mere spectatorship, a new resulting technique, leadership by means of a permanent staff of artists (not of merchants in art), elimination of private profit by endowment and public support, dedication in the service to the whole community: these are chief among its essentials, and these imply a new and nobler scope for the art of the theater itself. [1912] |
Percy | McKaye | |
Acting, Shakespeare |
Has anyone understood that the basic thing about Elizabethan theatre is that it was played in daylight? The actor saw the eyes of the audience. |
Peter | Hall | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Directing, General |
I think that first nights should come near the end of a play's run--as indeed, they often do. |
Peter | Ustinov | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Directing |
The work of rehearsal is looking for meaning and then making it meaningful. |
Peter | Brook | |
Directing, General |
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are suddenly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life. The marvel of being one. |
Peter | Brook |