The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. — Stella Adler
Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place. — Martha Graham
To me, theater is the mecca; if you really love to act, that's where it's the most fun, by a long shot. — Scott Caan
Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it. — Augusto Boal
Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre. — Joan Littlewood
To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination. — Simon Callow
The only thing that matters is the theater! — Lily Rabe
But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms. — Wole Soyinka
I hate the word 'production'...it's a ceremony, it's a ritual...you should go out of the theatre stronger and more human than when you went in. — Ariane Mnouchkine
The theater is a school we shall never have done with studying and learning. — Robert Edmond Jones
Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good. — Terrence Mann
Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French. — Cyril Cusack
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
Inspirational Theatre Quotes
An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer. — Marlon Brando
I did an A Level in Theatre Studies and had a really inspirational teacher, and then I just went on to university. — Jessica Raine
If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. — Jack Lemmon
See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers. — Etta James
Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. — Meryl Streep
I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you. — Meryl Streep
Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results. — Marilyn Monroe
Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play. — Jean Cocteau
When you stand and share your story in an empowering way, your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. — Iyanla Vanzant
Theatre Acting Quotes
Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you. — Constantin Stanislavski
I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. — Peter Brook
You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done. — Sanford Meisner
In the theatre we reach out and touch the past through literature, history and memory so that we might receive and relive significant and relevant human qualities in the present and then pass them on to future generations. — Anne Bogart
An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents. — Alec Guinness
I hold theatre acting in such high esteem that it scares me. — Kate Bosworth
Acting is the art of speaking in a loud, clear voice and the avoidance of bumping into the furniture. — Alfred Lunt
There's nothing more boring than unintelligent actors, because all they have to talk about is themselves and acting. There have to be other things. — Tim Robbins
The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience, there is no theater. Everything done is ultimately for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, fellow players, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful. — Viola Spolin
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to fully express emotion. — Kate Reid
Theatre Actors Quotes
Preparing a character is the opposite of building-it is a demolishing, removing brick by brick everything in the actor's muscles, ideas and inhibitions that stands between him and the part, until one day, with a great rush of air, the character invades his every pore. — Peter Brook
There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on. — George Clooney
We can compare classical chess and rapid chess with theatre and cinema - some actors don't like the latter and prefer to work in the theatre. — Boris Spassky
I believe in the time when we shall be able to create works of art in the Theatre without the use of the written play, without the use of actors. — Edward Gordon Craig
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. — Mark Leslie
I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room. — James Denton
You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something. — Kenneth Haigh
The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation. — Constantin Stanislavski
An actor knows two important things - to be honest in what he is doing and to be in touch with the audience. That's not bad advice for a politician either. — Ronald Reagan
Musical Theatre Quotes
I dislike organized games, swimming pools, fashionable resorts, night clubs, music in restaurants, and political manifestoes; I enjoy driving from coast to coast, good food and drink, a few friends, dogs, the theatre, long walks, music and free conversation. — James Hilton
I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college. — Wesley Snipes
Musical theatre is something I'm familiar with, I've been doing that. — David Naughton
I grew up overseas in Indonesia, and my school had a great art, music, and theatre program. — Angela Kinsey
Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it. — Aristotle
There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the entrepreneur into the creative economy. — John Baldacci
The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form. — Harold Prince
We haven't truly had a zeitgeisty, 'songs on the radio' show, since...I want to say "One Night in Bangkok" was the last musical theatre song that charted. That was so long ago. — Nikka Graff Lanzarone
I wanted to be a musical theatre actress - I wanted to play Sally Bowles, forever and ever always. — Carey Mulligan
See, there's only two theaters, man that are set up pretty groovy all around for music and for smooth stage changes, good lighting and all that - the Fillmore and The Capitol Theatre. And those are the only two in the whole country. — Jerry Garcia
Live Theatre Quotes
All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists. — Stephen Sondheim
Consider the public. Never fear it nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all never, never, never bore the living hell out of it. — Noel Coward
Just be truthful - and if you can fake that, you've got it made. — Barbara Stanwyck
The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood lawn cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the now dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theatres and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe. — Robert Montgomery
Then I left school at 16 and worked in Perth Repertory Theatre, which was quite nearby where I lived. And I worked there for about six or seven months, as part of the stage crew. — Ewan McGregor
I think I'm a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn't want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time. — Penelope Keith
I think theatres will always remain a sacred place where people go for something live and experience things live, which is very different than the experience of film. — Susan Stroman
My playground was the theatre. I'd sit and watch my mother pretend for a living. As a young girl, that's pretty seductive. — Gwyneth Paltrow
You can't remember what movie you saw two weeks ago, but you can remember what Broadway show you saw two weeks ago and where you ate dinner - everything about it. There's something about live theatre that hits you in the heart. — Susan Stroman
You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up. — Daniel Day Lewis
Movie Theatre Quotes
My plan is to have a theatre in some small town or something and I'll be manager. Ill be the crazy old movie guy. — Quentin Tarantino
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! — Roberto Benigni
The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a movie theatre is to go down to the front and turn around, and look at all the uplifted faces, the light from the screen reflected upon them. — Francois Truffaut
I think it is so much more fun to discover film in the movie theatre when there is so much anticipation about the movie. — Anne Hathaway
I love going to all kinds of movies, I screen DVDs in my house, but I go to the theatre a lot in the afternoon. I don't get bugged because there aren't many people around. — Danny Devito
I've love to do more movies. Just because I'm interested in the medium very much. I've done a lot of theatre at this point, and I've done a lot of TV. I've done a few independent films, but a lot of them have not seen the light of day. It'd be really nice to be in a film that gets out there. — Morena Baccarin
Do you know what makes a movie work? Moments. Give the audience half a dozen moments they can remember, and they'll leave the theatre happy. — Rosalind Russell
Now I'm seen by more people in one episode than I was in 20 years of theatre and movies. It's gratifying to have an impact on 25 million people a night, but I can say goodbye to my lunch-pail life as a working actor. I'm scared I might be a celebrity. — William Petersen
Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts. — Yahoo Serious
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies. — Sean Penn
Theatre Directors Quotes
Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act. — James Agate
I have walked many times around the world and each time it's different from the last one. It feels a little bit like I am a theatrical director, creating a theatre in space. It's really a theater in the sky. But of course the World Trade Center is certainly the most well-known of my productions. — Philippe Petit
I directed before I was even in television; I directed in the theatre for seven years, so that was my trade anyway. But in the UK, I've given up any hope of being considered a director. — Mel Smith
On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre. — Andrzej Wajda
Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity. — Robert McKee
I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful. — Stephen Daldry
In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me. — Anne-Marie Duff
I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies. — Stephen Daldry
In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience. — Ian Mckellen
I think theatre helped, only because it was acting experience. I got to work with a lot of directors. — James Denton
Broadway Theatre Quotes
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? — Emilia Clarke
I received the most fantastic welcome to the Broadway Theatre community. I walked on stage to tremendous applause and a long standing ovation, wondering when I was ever going to be able to say my first line! — Elaine Paige
I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress. — Kathleen Turner
What success I achieved in the theatre is due to the fact that I have always worked just as hard when there were ten people in the house as when there were thousands. Just as hard in Springfield, Illinois as on Broadway. — Bill Robinson
Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me. — Fred Melamed
It's lovely that the Hollywood stars are crossing over to Broadway.... There used to be such a dividing line in the country between Hollywood and the theatre and that's just melting away. It's just wonderful right now! — Julie Andrews
My mother's side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega, was a general manager for Neil Simon shows on Broadway. — Yancy Butler
Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio. — Mel Torme
It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross. — Tom Stoppard
I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city. — Todd English
Theater Quotes
You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness. — Cyrus the Great
It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. — Bertolt Brecht
When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater. — Morgan Freeman
I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches. — Strom Thurmond
To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater. — Lenny Bruce
The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes. — Arthur Miller
This...is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theater is an anachronism, a ludicrous anachronism. — Minnie Maddern Fiske
In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work. — Trevor Nunn
We can guess that the unacceptable conduct of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib resulted in part from the dangerous state of affairs on the ground in a theater of war. — John Yoo
Twentieth-century culture's disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movies, theater, pop idols and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in the reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead. — Jim Morrison
Stage Play Quotes
Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself; who exists save Him? The individual suffers because he perceives duality. It is duality which causes all sorrow and grief. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. — Anandamayi Ma
The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery. — Erik Erikson
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. — William Shakespeare
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. — William Shakespeare
Of all the preaching in the world, I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or to move their minds with tickling levity and affect them as stage plays used to, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence for the name of God. — Richard Baxter
If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it's not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court. — Bill Russell
The world of chemical reactions is like a stage, on which scene after scene is ceaselessly played. The actors on it are the elements. — Clemens Winkler
I'm probably never happier than when I'm by myself in the water. What I've worked and sacrificed for is not to be on stage playing music but to surf in some secluded place. It's a grounding element. Waves don't care who you are. — Eddie Vedder
When you see what you're here for, the world begins to mirror your purpose in a magical way. It's almost as if you suddenly find yourself on a stage in a play that was written expressly for you. — Betty Sue Flowers
All this cuddling and kissing on stage these days, well it's all right in football when someone scores a goal, but not when you're playing darts. — Eric Bristow
Theatrical Quotes
Young artists wish for inspired moments. And you find them; you take them; eager artists are bandits. Theatrical moments arrive, and...you grab. Good! You know it will draw attention to you. But you aim to be more than bandits, no? So, okay...now be Samurai. — Jerzy Grotowski
A real theatrical experience shakes the calm of the senses, liberates the compressed unconscious and drives towards a kind of potential revolt . . . — Antonin Artaud
My pictures are about everyday life combined with theatrical effect. I want them to feel outside of time, to take something routine and make it irrational. I’m always looking for a small moment that is a revelation — Gregory Crewdson
I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree. — Bela Lugosi
The language of the younger generation has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism. — Elizabeth Hardwick
Be reflective...and stay away from the theater as much as you can. Stay out of the theatrical world, out of its petty interests, its inbreeding tendencies, its stifling atmosphere, its corroding influence. Once become — Minnie Maddern Fiske
Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical. — Dylan Moran
Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall. — Stephen Sondheim
God will have life to be real; we will be damned, but it shall be theatrical. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm really very sorry for you all, but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances. — W. S. Gilbert
Musical Theater Quotes
Simplify, slow down, be kind. And don't forget to have art in your life - music, paintings, theater, dance, and sunsets. — Eric Carle
I'm preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that's coming up in New York City. — Jessica Hagedorn
Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music — John Lithgow
Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing. — Ravi Zacharias
I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies. — Francis Ford Coppola
Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer. — Betty Buckley
Anyone interested in design must be interested in other fields of expression - theater, ballet, photography, literature, music. — Lester Beall
Bangladesh is a world of metaphor, of high and low theater, of great poetry and music. You talk to a rice farmer and you find a poet. You get to know a sweeper of the streets and you find a remarkable singer. — Jean Houston
Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world. — Alan Rickman
Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing -- all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art -- at the door. — Konstantin Stanislavisky
In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke. — Soren Kierkegaard
Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing - all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art - at the door. — Constantin Stanislavski
Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding. — Peter Brook
It is not theatre that is indispensable, but something quite different. To cross the frontiers between you and me. — Jerzy Grotowski
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself. — Bertolt Brecht
In my freshman year in high school, I went to the only public high school in Boston with a theatre program. — Donnie Wahlberg
New Singapore will be one of the world's finest, most liveable cities. Arts, theatres, museums, music and sports will flourish. Singapore will be a lively and exciting place.. Our city will not only have depth, but also the richness of diversity. But above all, Singapore will a home for Singaporeans. — Goh Chok Tong
The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony--periods when the antithesis is in abeyance. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design. — Jim Henson
In the theatre, every form once born is mortal; every form must be reconceived, and its new conception will bear the marks of all the influences that surround it. — Peter Brook
I have never seen a game's graphics look so sharp and clean. The sound design for the game is also unique on the Xbox. The memory on this system allowed us to provide the user with 5.1 Dolby surround sound for home theatre owners. — Don Bluth
I believe in the immortality of the Theatre, it is a most joyous place to hide, for all those who have secretly put their childhood in their pockets and run off and away with it, to play on to the end of their days. — Max Reinhardt
I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai. — Orson Welles
With a theatre audience there's always the additional sense of a sustained challenge of which I'm acutely aware and for which you need to have the tools ready - your voice, physicality, brain. — Greta Scacchi
I have always been a Laugher, disturbing people who are not laughers, upsetting whole audiences at theatres... I laugh, that's all. I love to laugh. Laugher to me is being alive. I have had rotten times, and I have laughed through them. Even in the midst of the very worst times I have laughed. — William Saroyan
Everyone has a different path. I knew no one in the acting industry growing up. I never did a play until college. I was not outspoken when I was younger and I hated being the center of attention. But I had a dream of being an actor. I went to NYU and studied theatre. I learned a craft. And began my career straight out of college. — Peter Facinelli
The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything - gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness - rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre. — Antonin Artaud
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. — Sayings
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone. — Maggie Smith
In Conclusion
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