Theatre Quotes
For use in newsletters, season or fundraising brochures or emails, presentations--you name it.
Category | Quote | First | Last | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
Backstage |
There is no definitive list of the duties of a stage manager that is applicable to all theaters and staging environments. Regardless of specific duties, however, the stage manager is the individual who accepts responsibility for the smooth running of rehearsals and performances, on stage and backstage. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
Acting, Directing, General |
You can't make theater happen without actors. The actor is the central ingredient in making theater happen. Audiences may come to theaters to see the work of stage managers, directors and producers, but the only people who can communicate theater magic to audiences, through ideas and emotions, are the actors. They are the only ones who can communicate this by themselves, and if necessary, they can get along without you. But you can't make theater without the actor. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
Acting, Backstage, Directing, General |
The director is responsible for interpreting the playwright's work through the cast with the help of the staff. It is the director's artistic concept of the play that the cast, staff, and crew work to obtain. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
Backstage |
An interesting difference between new and experienced stage managers is that the new stage manager thinks of running the show as the most difficult and most demanding part of the job, whereas the experienced stage manager thinks of it as the most relaxing part. Perhaps the reason is that experienced stage managers have built up work habits that make then so thoroughly prepared for the production phase that they [can] sit back during performances to watch that preparation pay off. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
General |
Festivals promote the improvement of theater. They give theater people the opportunity to meet, to present their dramatic skills and see what their fellow theater workers are doing (and how well). They offer opportunities for exchange of ideas, competition, and social contact. Participants get a chance to go on the road, to play in an unfamiliar environment. They have an opportunity to evaluate themselves by the reactions of judges and a new audience. Participants may also measure themselves by comparison to the other groups entered. Festivals often result in joyful, stimulating, exciting, and rewarding experiences. |
Lawrence | Stern | Stage Management |
Acting |
It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman. |
Tallulah | Bankhead | Tallulah: My Autobiography |
Costumes |
The moment an actor walks on stage, an impression is made. The audience immediately gains crucial information, both about the production as a whole and the character. A costume is a transformation garment, one that assists an actor to beomce, for a time, someone else. |
Kaoime | Malloy | The Art of Theatrical Design |
Acting |
The important talent is the talent to develop one's talent. |
Howard | Stein | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model. |
George | Lewes | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Imagination! Imagination! I put it first years ago, when I was asked what qualities I thought necessary for success upon the stage. And I am still of the same opinion. Imagination, industry [hard work], and intelligence--the three I's--are all indispensable to the actor, but of these three the greatest is, without any doubt, imagination. |
Ellen | Terry | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
I learned acting by doing it. And although I had never taken an acting class, it didn't take long to learn how to be on the stage. All you have to do is to be humiliated in front of an audience a few times. If you don't like being humiliated publicly, you learn how to act. |
Ron | Vawter | 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 main difference between the art of the actor and all other arts is that every other [non-performing] artist may create whenever he is in the mood of inspiration. But the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theatre. This is the chief secret of our art. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose. |
Lee | Strasberg | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Shakespeare |
Playing Shakespeare requires technique. You don't play a Bach toccata by getting in the mood. |
Kevin | Kline | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Shakespeare |
Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down, unless you're a king. |
Josephine | Hull | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Being another character is more interesting than being yourself. |
John | Gielgud | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
There are no small parts, there are only small actors. |
Konstantin | Stanislavksy | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
It is widely acknowledged to be the toughest job to get any two acting teachers to agree about anything. |
Robert | Lewis | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Directing |
The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays. |
Stella | Adler | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature. [Hamlet] |
William | Shakespeare | 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 |
Good actors are good because of the things they can tell us without talking. When they are talking they are the slaves of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor. |
Cedric | Hardwicke | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
The most precious things in speech are pauses. |
Ralph | Richardson | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting |
Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly. |
Rosalind | Russell | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
Acting |
A good actor makes clear the meaning of the words. A better actor gives also the emotion of the part. The best actor adds emotion of which the character is unconscious. |
Clare | Eames | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Acting, Playwriting |
It is the writer's job to make the play interesting. It is the actor's job to make the performance truthful. |
David | Mamet | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
Costumes, Lighting, Set Design |
The sole aim of the arts of scene-designing, costuming, lighting, is to enhance the natural powers of the actor. |
Robert | Edmond Jones | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. |
Samuel | Johnson | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
General |
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. |
Aristotle | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips | |
Set Design |
A stage set should not make a pretty picture of its own. The empty stage should look formal and pleasing, but should seem to be waiting for the action to complete it; it should not hold definite significance in itself. |
G. Wilson | Knight | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Set Design |
There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead. |
Robert | Edmond Jones | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
Lighting |
If I am so insistent about the bright lights, both the stage and house lights, it is because I should in some way like both actors and audience to be caught up n the same illumination, and for there to be no place for them to hide, or even half-hide. |
Jean | Genet | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |
Lighting |
In a circle of light on the stage in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone. . . . This is called solitude in public. . . . You can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell. |
Konstantin | Stanislavsky | The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips |