Home / Topics / Play Quotes

Play Quotes

Browse 18120 quotes about Play.

Play Quotes

“In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that.”

Different Play Character Light Night Actors Simple Audience Theater Every Night

Author:Diego Luna

“I'm a total theater junkie - whether I'm working on a stage or sitting in a seat. I am always looking for a great play and a great part to do.”

Play Stage Sitting Theater Seats Junkie

Author:Cynthia Nixon

“Music is my passion, singing, performing. I play piano and musical theater is my background.”

Play Passion Music Is Singing Theater Musical Backgrounds Piano Performing My Passion Musical Theater Music Is My Passion

Author:Janel Parrish

“Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.”

People Thinking Different Real Play Film Acting Unique Theater Muscles Disagree Fulfilling Complement Different Experiences Flexing

Author:Eddie Redmayne

“As someone who's been doing a lot of classical theater recently, I loved the idea of getting to run around in Steven Alan, and not be in a corset and a wig, and not have a dialect, and get to be in a 90-minute play with no intermission, and get to do real comedy.”

Ideas Real Play Running Comedy Minutes Theater Wigs Dialect Corsets Intermission

Author:Lily Rabe

“I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.”

Kind Ends Play Middle Theater Scripts Hospitals Opera Spontaneous Toes 80s Soap Soap Operas Be Spontaneous General Hospital

Author:Jack Wagner

“I'm doing this play right now, the new David Mamet play. It's called 'Race,' and it's very interesting how people really leave the theater filled with the desire to talk about the play and the issues and the characters, and how they're all navigating their personal views around race.”

People Play Character Desire Interesting Views Race Issues Right Now Theater Filled Very Interesting Personal Views

Author:Kerry Washington

“People may know me from films, but theater is my first love. I did about 35 plays before I even landed my first screen role. I'm very comfortable on stage, and theater is not something you can just wing.”

People Knows Firsts May Play Film Roles Stage Comfortable Theater Wings Screens Know Me First Love

Author:Sanaa Lathan

“You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from Star Search or Survivor or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.”

People Play Kids Stars Theater Comedian Survivor Stand Up Comedian

Author:Steve Zahn

“I've seen plays that are, objectively, total messes that move me in ways that their tidier brethren do not. That's the romantic mystery of great theater. Translating this ineffability into printable prose is a challenge that can never be fully met.”

Way Play Moving Challenges Mystery Mets Theater Mess Prose Translate Brethren

Author:Ben Brantley

“When I first started acting, I started in opera and had a great desire to play grand, tragic characters. I got sidetracked in musical theater and ended up doing a lot of comedy.”

Firsts Play Character Desire Acting Comedy Theater Musical Tragic Opera Musical Theater

Author:Leslie Easterbrook

“I did a play I think my first six months on the show, called Bullpen. Then I got involved with Theater Forty and did this play called Plastic which is about two male models coming to a casting call.”

Thinking Firsts Two Play Shows Months Involved Six Models Theater Males Forty Plastic Six Months Casting

Author:Austin Peck

“With me, growing up in a theater family and having them be so supportive, from the jump, and being a part of this theater community where the brass ring is working, wherever that is, and then to play a character where he's not really concerned with that and is really just concerned with the monetary aspect of the job, and then to be identified with someone who is the antithesis of your energy and where you come from, has been a very interesting and surreal ride.”

“I'm one of those pathetic actors who will say yes to every play reading just because I do miss the stage so much. What I really miss about the theater is that in the end, it's yours to give. In television and film, it's yours to do and someone else's to take and someone else's to give. As much as I love television - the biggest luxury of all is to know that you have a job to go to - I do miss that connection and having that power over my own performance on stage.”

Knows Giving Ends Play Jobs Film Reading Actors My Own Stage Missing Television Connections Performances Theater Luxury Pathetic

Author:Julianna Margulies

“I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work.”

People May Done Play Sound Performances Theater Refining

Author:Nastassja Kinski

“I've always said I prefer theater, but there's only ever been one play that I really loved doing, and that was The Seagull.”

Said Play Theater Seagull

Author:Carey Mulligan

“I'm not a theater rat, so I never got a theatrical agent and did a play. I came really close though.”

Play Theater Agents Rats Theatrical

Author:Courtney Love

“This sounds so bogus, but I would love to, at some point when my kids are in college, is just go do a whole season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and do a year of plays. Most actors miss the days of live theater.”

Years Play Whole Kids Actors Sound Missing College Seasons Theater Festivals Oregon Live Theater

Author:Donal Logue

“I went to college to be a jock and to play on the baseball team. And then, I got cut and realized that that was it for that. I was really small. The other guys were really big, on that team. I was a bit of a theater nerd, and I was an art history major.”

Art Play Bigs Guy Bits Cutting Team College Majors Baseball Theater Nerd Other Guys Art History Jocks Baseball Team

Author:Charlie Day

“Rage properly channeled can definitely give birth to good even great theater. Disgust, a more passive and distancing emotion, is far less likely to. Would you rush to a play called Look Back in Queasiness?”

Giving Looks Play Emotion Birth Theater Rage Disgusting Passive

Author:Ben Brantley

“The avant-garde theater is fun; it is free-wheeling, bold, iconoclastic, and often wildly, wildly funny. If you will approach it with childlike innocence -- putting your standard responses aside, for they do not apply -- if you will approach it on its own terms, I think you will be in for a liberating surprise. I think you may no longer be content with plays that you can't remember halfway down the block.”

Ifs Thinking May Play Remember Fun Term Approach Standards Theater Surprise Response Block Innocence Liberating Halfway Childlike Avant Garde Wheeling

Author:Edward Albee

“The condition of the theater is always an accurate measure of the cultural health of a nation. A play always exists in the present tense (if it is a valuable one), and its music -- its special noise -- is always contemporary. The most valuable function of the theater as an art form is to tell us who we are, and the health of the theater is determined by how much of that we want to know.”

Source: Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee

“In theater, there's a lot of discipline involved in doing eight shows a week for a year and a half. It's nice to be able to bring some of that bag of tools with you over to the film world, where you don't have the rehearsal, you don't have an audience. You don't have a month of rehearsal to examine these words, and you meet the guy who's going to play your brother the morning that you shoot the scene. So you need a bag of tools.”

World Needs Years Play Shows Able Film Guy Half Morning Audience Nice Week Brother Months Discipline Involved Scene Tools Theater Eight Bags Rehearsal Your Brother

Author:William Sadler

“Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games.”

“I was raised in the theater and, as it turned out, a TV show was like performing a new one-act play. So, it was really no different.”

Different Play Shows Tvs Theater Raised Performing Tv Shows

Author:Bea Arthur

“So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.”

Done Play Would Be Song Next Careers Theater Musical Brands Brand New Professional Career Pantomime Ibsen

Author:Trevor Nunn

“Well, I couldn't play an instrument. I'd just stand up front and announce the numbers. They had me sing a little, but that was a horrible mistake. I can't carry a tune in a bucket. We played black theaters and nightclubs all over hell. One-nighters. Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Earle Theater in Philly - That was big time for blacks.”

Wells Littles I Can Play Bigs Sports Black Numbers Mistake Hell Fronts Theater Instruments Athlete Horrible Tunes Apollo Buckets Harlem Nightclubs Horrible Mistakes

Author:Jesse Owens

“I love theater. I go all the time. It's one of the reasons I moved to New York. But I understand that I have limited range as an actor. I can only play people who talk like me.”

People I Can Reason Play Actors New York Theater Moved Like Me Range

Author:Steve Earle

“People sometimes say, "Isn't it boring, isn't it always the same? It's the same lines." I go, "Well, do you play tennis? Because that's the best analogy I can give." If you go out eight times and play tennis eight times this week, yeah it's the same rules but it's a different game every time you're out on that court.And that's the best analogy I can come up with the theater.”

People Ifs Giving Wells I Can Different Sometimes Play Games Lines Week Theater Yeah Court Come Up Boring Eight Tennis Analogies

Author:Kevin Spacey

“I consider theater, this is a vacation for me from LA, I sort of view this as I get to have this vacation and during my vacation I get to work on acting. It's like an acting class. And if I go too long without doing a play, I just feel empty. Like approaching a role, I feel like the pool is very shallow, like I'm drawn from it. So I need to come back and do a play, fortunately I've been able to, every couple of years.”

Ifs Needs Feels Years Long Play Able Views Acting Class Roles Couple Empty Theater Pool Vacation Shallow Acting Classes

Author:Alan Tudyk

“In the theater you rehearse for a minimum of five to six weeks. And then you get to play it. Which means you get to get better. That's the great thing about the theater.”

Mean Play Five Week Six Theater Great Things Get Better Minimum

Author:Christopher Walken

“It's hard for me to play seated theaters because people tend to sit down and get a little bit complacent, so it's less energy. It's just very dry and dead. People start to feel like they're watching a movie. The environment when they walk into it, it's not standing room only, smoking and drinking and rock 'n' roll. So it's a little bit dangerous to do that.”

“I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasnt good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.”

Years Firsts Enough Play Bigs Faces Three Boys Terrible Theater Going Away Good Enough Three Years

Author:Kevin Spacey