Best 631 quotes in «theatre quotes» category

If you spend a hundred bucks, or more, to go to the theatre, something should happen to you. Maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your values, or about the way you think about things. Maybe you should come out of the theatre, something haven happened to you. Maybe you should be changing, or thinking about changing. But if you just go there, and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted a hundred bucks.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you." In short, entertainment fulfills our expectations. Art, on the other hand, makes no compromise for public taste as it inspires us to consider life's complexities and ambiguities. Art is the opposition testing the strength of societal and cultural values-values that are thoughtlessly adopted by the mass of individuals living unexamined lives and all who cannot imagine a different way of seeing life.

If you spend a hundred bucks, or more, to go to the theatre, something should happen to you. Maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your values, or about the way you think about things. Maybe you should come out of the theatre, something having happened to you. Maybe you should be changing, or thinking about changing. But if you just go there, and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted a hundred bucks.

In 1908, the great Russian actress Alla Nazimova played Nora in New York in performances that became legendary. In the audience was Halvdan Koht, who describes Nazimova in the last scene acting “with a passionate intensity that made Nora’s transformation at the end completely an inner reality, conveyed in low-pitched, emotion-laden words” (K 323). Koht recalls his horror when members of the audience, mistaking “the work of art” for “a collection of ideas,” began to applaud Nora’s every line “as though it were a political harangue” (K 323). But while not a harangue, Nora’s words are nevertheless resoundingly political, for in representing the “inner reality” of an obscure Norwegian housewife, they constitute a discourse of recognition for every woman who has ever lived her life for a man, and by Nora’s count, there are “millions.” Displaying what the modern theatre condemns as bad manners, the 1908 audience was responding to Ibsen’s powerful feminist poetry, the exhilarating promise that on the other side of the doll house, women, no less then men, could learn to take themselves seriously: “I believe that, before all else, I’m a human being, no less than you — or anyway, I ought to try to become one” (193). The universality of A Doll House does not come from “its demand for truth in every human relation” (K 323), but in its demand for equality in the relation between women and men.

I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.

I have Shakespeared my Moliere to Tenessee, and I am Wild for Becket! But I got a little tired of the redundancy.

Il mio cactus ha il reggiseno.

In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.

Ingen kand dømme om et Skuespill, uden den der haver udstuderet et Theatrum, og af Erfarenhed mærket, hvad Virkning en Comoedie giør paa Skue-Pladsen: Og, naar saa er, kand man ikke meget reflectere paa deres Domme, der sidde hiemme og criticere udi deres Skriver-Stuer, uden at have seet et Skuespills Forestilning; thi de samme kand ikke dømme uden om Stilen, om Moralske Sententzer, og et Stykkes Regularitet, da Erfarenhed lærer, at en Comoedie, som efter alle Academiske Regler er indretted, dog ingen Comoedie er. Thi mangt et Skuespill, som ved Læsning synes at være af ingen Betydelse, haver den fortreffeligste Virkning paa Skue-Pladsen. Et Skuespils Vægt og Gyldighed grunder sig derfor ikke paa lærde Journalisters Critiqver, men paa Tilskuernes Applausu: naar jeg siger Tilskuerne, meener jeg alleene saadanne, som have en naturlig og ufordærved Smag.

I regard the theater 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. This supremacy of the theater derives from the fact that it is always "now" on the stage.

Le monde est un théâtre, mais la pièce est mal distribuée.

...mangt et Skuespill fortiener ikke Navn af Skuespill, endskiønt alle Logiske Regler derved ere i Agt tagne.

MARIE-LOUISE. […] J’ai lu dans le Sélection, l’aut’jour, qu’une famille c’est comme une cellule vivante, que chaque membre de la famille doit contribuer à la vie de la cellule… Cellule mon cul… Ah! Oui, pour être une cellule, c’est une cellule, mais pas de c’te sorte-là! Nous autres, quand on se marie, c’est pour être tu-seuls ensemble. Toé [Léopold], t’es tu-seule, ton mari à côté de toé est tu-seul, pis tes enfants sont tu-seuls de leur bord… Pis tout le monde se regarder comme chien et chat… Une gang de tu-seuls ensemble, c’est ça qu’on est!

I love it when you go to see something, and you enter as an individual, and you leave as a group. Because you've all been bound together by the same experience.

In any case, the goal is the same: to connect.

It is not a good idea to call yourself a sardine in a family like Leo's, who will not let you forget it.

It is not enough to discover the secret of a play, its thought and feelings—the actor must be able to convert them into living terms.

It is very good, Wisehammer, it's very well written, but it's too-too-political. It will be considered provocative." "You don't want me to say it." "Not tonight. We have many people against us." "I could tone it down. I could omit 'We left our country for our country's good.'" "That's the best line.

It’s no longer history in the making. It’s our story we are making.

It’s shameful that today’s mouthy political expositors aren’t better versed in Orwell. Can you imagine a theatre director who hasn’t studied Shakespeare?

I've never been in love, never in my life. Oh, I've dreamed of love, dreamed endlessly, day and night, but my soul is like a fine piano that's locked, and the key is lost.

I was hungry when I left Pyongyang. I wasn't hungry just for a bookshop that sold books that weren't about Fat Man and Little Boy. I wasn't ravenous just for a newspaper that had no pictures of F.M. and L.B. I wasn't starving just for a TV program or a piece of music or theater or cinema that wasn't cultist and hero-worshiping. I was hungry. I got off the North Korean plane in Shenyang, one of the provincial capitals of Manchuria, and the airport buffet looked like a cornucopia. I fell on the food, only to find that I couldn't do it justice, because my stomach had shrunk. And as a foreign tourist in North Korea, under the care of vigilant minders who wanted me to see only the best, I had enjoyed the finest fare available.

L'enfance est un couteau planté dans la gorge.

Men jeg drister mig, uden Vanitet, at sige, at vore Nordiske Tilskuere, helst af Middelstand, ere langt beqvem-mere Dommere herudi, end de Parisiske: Thi hvis de første ikke have saa fiin Smag som de sidste, saa have de den dog ikke saa selsom og fordærved.

Men, mine damer og herrer, De må ikke derfor tro at jeg agter definitivt at nedlægge min teaterpen. Nej, den agter jeg ty tilbage til og holde fast til det sidste. Jeg har nemlig endnu diverse galskaber på lager.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high upreared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide on man, And make imaginary puissance; Think when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

Oh, where is it, where did my past go, when I was young, happy and intelligent, when my dreams and thoughts had some grace, and the present and future were lit up with hope? Why is it, that when we've just started to live, we grow dull, gray, uninteresting, lazy, useless, with flattened-out souls?

On sait pas comment faire pour jamais oublier parce que j'pense que le vrai problème c'est ça c'est pas qu'on s'aime pus c'est qu'on oublie pis qu'on a pas appris comment faire vieillir la manière de se dire qu'on s'aime.

Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.

Roméo : Si j'ai profané avec mon indigne main cette châsse sacrée, je suis prêt à une douce pénitence : permettez à mes lèvres, comme à deux pèlerins rougissants, d'effacer ce grossier attouchement par un tendre baiser. Juliette : Bon pèlerin, vous êtes trop sévère pour votre main qui n'a fait preuve en ceci que d'une respectueuse dévotion. Les saintes mêmes ont des mains que peuvent toucher les mains des pèlerins ; et cette étreinte est un pieux baiser. Roméo : Les saintes n'ont-elles pas des lèvres, et les pèlerins aussi ? Juliette : Oui, pèlerin, des lèvres vouées à la prière. Roméo : Oh ! alors, chère sainte, que les lèvres fassent ce que font les mains. Elles te prient ; exauce-les, de peur que leur foi ne se change en désespoir. Juliette : Les saintes restent immobiles, tout en exauçant les prières. Roméo : Restez donc immobile, tandis que je recueillerai l'effet de ma prière. Vos lèvres ont effacé le péché des miennes. Juliette : Mes lèvres ont gardé pour elles le péché qu'elles ont pris des vôtres. Roméo : Vous avez pris le péché de mes lèvres ? Ô reproche charmant ! Alors rendez-moi mon péché. Juliette : Vous avez l'art des baisers.

Theatre is pure teleportation by means of suspension. It’s a voyage into the archives of the human imagination. A passport to all what ifs.

The closer they come to transcending technique and the memorization of lines--the closer to really beginning to act, in short--the more Chinese they begin to seem. Happy now approaches Miss Forsythe to pick her up in the restaurant with a wonderful formality, his back straight, head high, his hand-gestures even more precise and formal, but with a comic undertone that ironically comes closer to conveying the original American idea of the scene than when he was trying to be physically sloppy and "relaxed"--that is, imitating an American. I think that by some unplanned magic we may end up creating something not quite American or Chinese but a pure style springing from the heart of the play itself--the play as a nonnational event, that is, a human circumstance.

The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.

The Greeks believed that it was a citizen's duty to watch a play. It was a kind of work in that it required attention, judgement, patience, all the social virtues." "And the Greek were conquered by the more practical Romans, Arthur." "Indeed, the Romans built their bridges, but they also spent many centuries wishing they were Greeks. And they, after all, were conquered by the barbarians, or by their own corrupt and small spirits.

The Hulk before intermission, Bruce Banner after it.

The imagination is closer to the actor than real life-more agreeable, more comfortable.

The midgets acted all of the tragedies and many of the comedies. They acted them all at once, and it was fortunate that Tetrahedron had so many faces, otherwise he might have died of fatigue. They acted them all at once, and the emperor, walking round his theatre, could see them all at once, if he wished. Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

There’s nothing that makes me cry harder than fiction. There’s nothing that makes me weep, nothing that holds my breath and brings tears stinging to my eyes more than fiction. And all those sad realities which filter through my days. They leave no lasting impression. All they serve is small reminders of my busy life. Small purposes: remember the pain of the world. Okay, alright. I remember it all. Then I go watch a movie. I listen to the classical music station in my car at five-thirty pm where they always play that same song. I watch a play, watch the performance. Watch the smoke descend upon the stage. This fiction. It’s the only thing that affects me. Funny, isn’t it?

These days, you could stage a three-point orgy in the garden and nobody would bat an eye...

The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains. Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied. This is partly because the audience is also a court against which there is no appeal.

The Theatre of the Absurd, in the sense that it is truly the contemporary theatre, facing as it does man's condition as it is, is the Realistic theatre of our time; and that the supposed Realistic theatre—the term used here to mean most of what is done on Broadway—in the sense that it panders to the public need for self-congratulation and reassurance and presents a false picture of ourselves to ourselves is … really and truly The Theatre of the Absurd.

Thi enhver Skribent kand nu agere Comoedie Skriver og ingen frygter at see sit Arbeide spildt, i hvor mavert, elendigt og ilde sammenhængende det end er naar han tager den Præcaution at det endes med Sang og Dantz, hvilket man og seer at vor Alders Autores nøye i agttage. Man seer heraf, at en forderved Smag ogsaa har sin Nytte i Verden, og at det, som jeg derom skiemteviis har skrevet udi mine Moralske Tanker er ikke gandske ugrundet.

This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?" "To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said. "To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice.

Tranquilla, miciotta. Sarò un fidanzato modello" ammiccò. Sarebbe finita in tragedia.

We are reaching levels of high experiential comfort and our standards will keep rising. We want to feel, we want to experience, we want to connect, we want intelligence, and we want to play; Ladies and Gentlemen: A new theatre is on its way.

We know the Arts are the archives of our human history, the wind of invention and the heartbeat of humanity

We number nothing that we spend for you; Our duty is so rich, so infinite, That we may do it still without accompt. Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face, That we, like savages, may worship it.

What are all the thoughts rattling in your mind when you're not listening to the answers to questions you ask?" -Jo, Boom

What I wear on and off stage is my mask. You see, a mask doesn't hide you, it exposes you.

When you're in a show, all through rehearsals Tech Week hovers out there like a magical holy grail. In reality, Tech Week is always a train wreck of missed cues, forgotten lines, malfunctioning set pieces and short tempers.