Best 631 quotes in «theatre quotes» category

You have to understand your best. Your best isn't Barrymore's best or Olivier's best or my best, but your own. Every person has his norm. And in that norm every person is a star. Olivier could stand on his head and still not be you. Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body. We don't need for you to imitate anybody, because that would be second best. And second best is no better than your worst.

You never get anywhere until you figure out the difference between passion and compassion.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Acting is an everlasting search for truth.

A career in the theatre demands so much commitment.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice.

Acting's entertainment. It's not brain surgery.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.

Acting is the art of speaking in a loud, clear voice and the avoidance of bumping into the furniture.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.

A few years later, my Uncle David took me to the Earle Theatre to hear Duke Ellington.

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

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.

A good play is a play which when acted upon the boards make an audience interested and pleased. A play that fails in this is a bad play.

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

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

Actually, my favourite roles have been in theatre, but on TV, my faves were Slap Maxwell and Larry Sanders.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.

All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.

A lot of people think theatre must be much harder work than film, but anything histrionic or superfluous gets seen on camera so you have to work to distil it into a complete sense of what's true.

Although the theater is not life, it is composed of fragments or imitations of life, and people on both sides of the footlight have to unite to make the fragments whole and the imitations genuine.

All action in theatre must have inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real.

All that day she had had the feeling that she was playing in the theatre with actors better than herself and that her poor playing spoiled the whole thing.

An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote. A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills.

Any fifth language that you use should be equally used as just another bit of theater language, so that if you have a strong text, then the light should be as strongly part of that text as, for example, the sound it should be or whatever it is that you see.

Although one may fail to find happiness in theatrical life, one never wishes to give it up after having once tasted its fruits.

A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.

A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.

As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.

As far as I'm concerned, Cate Blanchett is a goddess, but she's really down to earth. She's got all those Oscars, she's made all those amazing films and she could spend her whole life doing that, but what does she also do? She gives birth to three boys and creates her own theatre in Sydney.

As far as I'm concerned all theatre is physical. As Aristotle says, you know, theatre is an act and an action, and he didn't mean just the writing of it, he meant that at the centre of any piece there is an action, a physical action.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme.

As in a theatre, the eyes of men, after a well-graced actor leaves the stage, are idly bent on him that enters next.

As for theatre, there's ups and downs to everything. Theatre is ephemeral. But that is part of its charm because you can always say the production was better than it was.

Auctions are bizarre combinations of slave market, trading floor, theatre and burlesque... a lot of people are going to be making a lot of excuses or maintaining that they were never part of this.

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.

A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.

A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.

At the same time, television theatre became more visibly active.

A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through?

Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.

Being another character is more interesting than being yourself.

Belonging to the Dramatists Guild Council where, with my fellow dramatists, I can directly affect (and protect) the professional lives of all American Playwrights has always made me feel that I am returning as much to the theatre as I withdraw. Because only playwrights can ensure the well-being of playwrights. No one else will do it for us.

Best performance of the year: Aston Villa v. Milan, September 1994

Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.