Best 631 quotes in «theatre quotes» category

We're so bereft of support of theatre in this day and age.

We talk about theatre museums filled with old costumes and things. What we also need is a theatre museum of the old routines on videotape. We are only the custodians of those techniques, and they should be preserved.

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

We try to place the human body in relation to the image all the time, so it's never a kind of a backdrop, but it's more of ...a much more integrative experience.

What I’ve learned along the way is that existence is cosmic theatre, but paradoxically, we should play our roles to the absolute best of our ability while having the wisdom not to take them too seriously.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

What theatre started to look at much earlier than any other form was the internal operations of ordinary people, sometimes using mythic models in order to tell the story.

What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.

When does a session of The Theatre of the Oppressed end? Never - since the objective is not to close a cycle, to generate a catharsis, or to end a development. On the contrary, its objective is to encourage autonomous activity, to set a process in motion, to stimulate transformative creativity, to change spectators into protagonists. And it is precisely for these reasons that the Theatre of the Oppressed should be the initiator of changes the culmination of which is not the aesthetic phenomenon but real life.

What draws me to the theatre, and what appealed to me about Too Much Light, is that you have no idea what's going to happen. That's the most exciting part of theatre, it's never the same. If it were, it would be like watching a movie.

Whenever I get a good script, I don't care whether it's telly or theatre or big screen - I'm not bothered.

When I'm doing theatre, I feel like my life's on hold. Even though you might go out for a coffee, or go and see a film, your brain is still there, pulling you back to it.

When I'm through with the Lee Greenwood Theatre, I won't do anything else in entertainment. Maybe I'll become an ambassador for the United States maybe I'll get into television, some news anchoring or something in a major city. Certainly the visibility would interest me a little bit. But someplace that would allow me to sit still certainly.

When I first saw a Fellini movie, I came out of the movie theatre and decided to become a lawyer! I thought to myself, it's impossible to make something so beautiful!

When I play, I feel like in a theatre, why should I look ugly then, because I'm a tennis player?

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.

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting.

When I was in college, all the pretty women were in the theatre, so I auditioned for a play.

When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.

When we'd suggested doing it, the Theatre Royal management had said, 'Nobody wants to see Waiting for Godot.' As it happened, every single ticket was booked for every single performance, and this confirmation that our judgment was right was sweet. Audiences came to us from all over the world. It was amazing.

When I was ten, I saw 'Grease' on stage and thought: 'I want to be part of that; it looks like so much fun.' My mum enrolled me in a local theatre group, and it all went from there.

When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.

When you do a film, you get picked up in a car, lunch is free. Theatre is really hard, and you get absolutely no money.

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

Whether it was working on theatre sets or stage lighting, I didn't realize most all of the skills I was exposed to were going to come in handy later on when I became a designer.

Whether you are a writer, or an actor, or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.

When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play.

Working on a film, you don't get time to develop rivalries, but the theatre is like a little village, and the differences between me, Lionel and Georgia grew.

With the theatre, your whole day is geared towards the evening's show, and that's the job. People usually go to work about 9 and come home around 5, or maybe 7.

Yes it was chaos, working through chaos, you never quite knew what you were going to do each day, but you knew that you wanted to make something.

You'd think is something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realize how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.

With theatre especially, you don't want to do it unless you love it - there's no way you can pull it off, making people happy, making yourself happy for 12 weeks or whatever.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny.

You learn more discipline in the theatre than you do in movies or TV. You're on stage every night and you have to sustain your energy level tor several hours.

You know obviously a big TV or film break would be lovely, but I find that I’m essentially a theatre trained actor and that’s what I love doing. I love fringe theatres in London, I love theatres like the Royal Court, Soho and the National obviously and if I could work in any of those and be a jobbing actor for a while then I’m very lucky.

Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth.

You get used to being lazy doing films, but classical theatre's going to finish me off.

You weren't going to the theatre to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world.

You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides.

Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively.

You take a plug and put it in a socket, and that's what the theatre is-it lights up right away. You speak, and they respond immediately.

Adieu, Camille, retourne à ton couvent, et lorsqu’on te fera de ces récits hideux qui t’ont empoisonnée, réponds ce que je vais te dire : Tous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards, hypocrites, orgueilleux et lâches, méprisables et sensuels ; toutes les femmes sont perfides, artificieuses, vaniteuses, curieuses et dépravées ; le monde n’est qu’un égout sans fond où les phoques les plus informes rampent et se tordent sur des montagnes de fange ; mais il y a au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c’est l’union de deux de ces êtres si imparfaits et si affreux. On est souvent trompé en amour, souvent blessé et souvent malheureux ; mais on aime, et quand on est sur le bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arrière, et on se dit : J’ai souffert souvent, je me suis trompé quelques fois, mais j’ai aimé. C’est moi qui ai vécu, et non pas un être factice créé par mon orgueil et mon ennui.

A genius is a person who, seeing farther and probing deeper than other people, has a different set of ethical valuations from theirs, and has energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her specific talents.

A large part of our excessive, unnecessary manifestations come from a terror that if we are not somehow signaling all the time that we exist, we will in fact no longer be there

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

A man stroking a dog’s head means the universe is stroking the universe; a child playing with a little dog means the universe is playing with the universe! If the universe is a theatre play, then we can be sure that there is only one player: The universe itself! Everything we see is the same player!

A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate his genius for expanding consciousness from his own passion for theatricality.

Artists are social sensors and transmitters of ideas