Best 414 quotes in «theater quotes» category

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good.

Perhaps one of the chief distinctions between a Drama for Marionnettes and a Proper Drama is this ... that whereas a Proper Drama has to be vague and roundabout in its movements, a Marionnette Drama had always better be direct and rapid and even obvious ... A Marionnette is not at all clever -- not subtle. He must fit the characte rlike a hand fits a glove, or all is undone. Therefore when we make a character in one of our Dramas we make the Marionnette to fit it. And so it comes about that a Marionnette does not play a number of parts, he plays only one... that is himself.

So always avoid banality. That is, avoid illustrating the author's words and remarks. If you want to create a true masterpiece you must always avoid beautiful lies: the truths on the calender under each date you find a proverb or saying such as: "He who is good to others will be happy." But this is not true. It is a lie. The spectator, perhaps, is content. The spectator likes easy truths. But we are not there to please or pander to the spectator. We are here to tell the truth.

She sat in her chair, eyes closed. She liked to be the last one to leave. She despised crowds, and their opinions as they left a performance, or worse, discussed the wait for the bathroom or where do you want to eat. It spoiled her mood. She was still in that other world, she would stay there as long as she possibly could, the parallel channels twining and tunneling through her cortex like coral.

Psihanalistul devine regizorul unui teatru privat - in loc sa fie inginerul sau mecanicul care monteaza unitati de productie, care se lupta cu agenti colectivi de productie si de antiproductie.

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.

The ability to lie persuasively is one of the greatest gifts a woman can possess in this life. Some critics, principally men, will argue that deception in women is inherently evil; but having spent the last fifteen years of my life in the theater, I can attest that lying not only is sometimes expedient but can save one's career.

That's how vile I am! I live Ireland, I breathe Ireland, and Christ how I loathe it, I wish I were a bloody Scot, that's how bloody awful it is being Irish! I think I hate Ireland more than I hate the theatre, and that's saying something!

Theater is the crucible where we can create the dynamics of life without suffering the flames of their combustion.

The Arts are the only acceptable theatre of war for peace.

The first few weeks of school were always surreal, like you landed on an alien planet with strange teachers and unfamiliar classrooms, even though the lockers and cafeteria seemed familiar.

The general conception that all actors are born exhibitionists is far from the truth. They are quite the opposite. They are shy, frightened people in hiding from themselves- people who have found a way of concealing their secret by footlights, make up and the parts they play. Their own self rejection is what has made most of them actors.

There is no limit to what a person can do that has been inspired by the arts!

the theater is one of the few places left in the bright and noisy world where we sit in the quiet dark together, to be awake.

The rest of us do “high school theater.” Lou does “theater.

[The ruling class] sees people in the working class as being almost animals. It sees itself as being synonymous with civilization and its cultivation as coming from its natural abilities and not from its wealth and privileged opportunities. It doesn't see that the way in which it monopolizes these things distorts the culture it derives from them and that this makes its culture irrational and an enemy of civilization.

The text is your greatest enemy.

The American actor is very lucky... Because so little is asked of him.

The things that make you strange are the things that make you powerful

This was awkward to infinity. Alex living here would change my entire routine. I was sharing a bathroom with my boyfriend. How scary was that? I had tampons and pads and everything in there. He was going to be naked in the shower on the other side of my bedroom wall. And I was going to be naked in the shower with him in my house.

The theatre is a tragic place, full of endings and partings and heartbreak. You dedicate yourself passionately to something, to a project, to people, to a family, you think of nothing else for weeks and months, then suddenly it's over, it's perpetual destruction, perpetual divorce, perpetual adieu. It's like éternel retour, it's a koan. It's like falling in love and being smashed over and over again.’ 'You do, then, fall in love.’ 'Only with fictions, I love players, but actors are so ephemeral. And then there’s waiting for the perfect part, and being offered it the day after you've committed yourself to something utterly rotten. The remorse, and the envy and the jealousy. An old actor told me if I wanted to stay in the trade I had better kill off envy and jealousy at the start.

Tutto ciò che di grande e bello c’è al mondo, gratta gratta, non è mai nato da un discorso razionale. Mai.

(Über Bertolt Brecht) aber letztlich war er doch kein Lehrer und kein Volkserzieher. Er war ein leidenschaftlicher Verführer. Möglichst alle wollte er verführen: Frauen und Männer, Junge und Alte, Künstler und Politiker. Und nirgends schienen ihm die Menschen so verführbar wie im Zuschauerraum des Theaters.

Those who earn their living by puppetry must satisfy the public demand, and so are to a large extent compelled to be conservative. As so often in other branches of the performing arts, it is only the amateur who can safely afford to experiment, to explore new forms and techniques, and to run the risk of failure.

We are all actors playing different roles in different phases of life. But we must try to play each role to perfection!

When a show ends, for a few days, my body sizzles with leftover energy, like a tree in the wake of a lightning strike.

When teachers participate in a literary experience with a professionally presented children's play, they are offering their students a text quite different from anything that they will experience within their classrooms. Within this literary experience, teachers join as equals with their students, and each, as audience members within the darkened space of the performance, create their own poems to hold within themselves or share with others.

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.

You aren’t allowed back until you’ve learned to willingly suspend disbelief.

You can't believe people when they look you in the eyes. You gotta' look behind them. See what they're standing in front of. What they're hiding. Everyone's hiding, Wes. Everybody. Nobody look like what they are.

Actually, I didn't like Dartmouth very much, but the whole theater scene I really liked.

Also watching a movie on DVD is different than watching it in the theater.

Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. We've never quite made peace with that in the theater---set designer Robin Wagner

When I enter the theater and there is a show onstage, it makes me feel safe in the knowledge that the world keeps turning. It also feels like I have died and I am attending my own funeral, so it’s good and bad.

When most dullards hear the words 'the theater,' they envision a twelve-screen multiplex where disaster porn entertains the culturally witless for 90 minutes at a time. Pfaugh. The word 'theater' has grandeur. Power. Back to its ancient Grecian origins, it means 'the seeing place.' A stage upon which actors and actresses use fiction to show us truths.

William looked up... through his tears... past the catwalk and lights... past the sky... through the dark and clouds and stars and into the void where he once knew God existed, then turned himself outside-in, alone, and asked, 'Why?

With his dream of a theater program for young people, Larry Wentzler had inadvertently done an amazing thing for all these squirrels. They had a place where they belonged, and, even if it was because he didn't want to deal with their being different, he didn't treat them any differently. Which I think is a pretty successful implementation of Christianity.

You are the antidote to any received behaviour. Take a walk when you can. Be alone when you can. Talk to people you care about when you can. We try our best, and somehow it's not enough. We are broken people, the theater shows this. Yet we don't let being inadequate keep us from giving our very best every time. If professionalism has taken the practice of performing to a place where broken human behavior is not acceptable, then it is the medium that is broken, and not the other way around. For at our essence, at our core, we are not professionals. We are amateurs. We are myth, history and advertising, but, still, we exist; we are real, and we are simply beginners. It's how we thrive. We begin and therefore perpetually remain connected to the spark. We ask questions, we thirst, and we learn. And the dissenters complete us, causing us to be better.

You know how thick I am. I don't even eat yoghurt because it's got culture in it.

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

Actors are as anxious about the state of audiences as aviators are over weather conditions.

All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater.

A lot of the old movie theaters are closing down now, which is really sad. It's still in the back of my mind.

And I think I'm an adrenaline junkie, and there's nothing that will spike your adrenaline more than sitting in a theater and listen to an audience react to something you've written.

And I started as a journalism major at Ohio State, ended up in theater and I love to read.

Any actor, any playwright who's worked a life in the theater knows how to do things cheaply and quickly. It's just all by necessity. Invention is everything.

Anyhow, even though I have this home theater, I love going out to the movies. Movies are meant to be experienced together.

Anyone can do theater, even actors. And theater can be done everywhere. Even in a theater.

Any show that's bringing in a young audience is doing a good thing, because that's the only way that theater will continue to grow. All the other audience members are going to be dead soon!

Architecture is a social act and the material theater of human activity.