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Theater Quotes

Browse 2622 quotes about Theater.

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Theater Quotes

“[To actors on opening night:] You have had good equipment to work with. You've had a theater with everything you needed, and you are involved with the play; but all the way through you have been handicapped. One essential has been denied you. Tonight the audience is there; now they are sitting out front; you have everything you need.”

WayNeedsHas BeensPlayNightActorsAudienceFrontsNeededInvolvedEssentialsSittingTheaterOpeningTonightDeniedEquipmentHandicappedOpening Night
Author:Hallie Flanagan
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“Questions, inside the larger mystery of sorrow, which contains us and our daily transit, and is large enough indeed to contain the whole shifting tidal theater where I make small constructions, my metaphors, my defenses. Against which I play out theories, doubts, certainties bright as high tide in sunlight, which shift just as that brightness does, in fog or rain.”

DoeEnoughPlayWholeDoubtMysteryTheorySorrowRainTheaterMetaphorDefenseCertaintyConstructionTidesSunlightFogShiftingBrightness
Author:Mark Doty
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“We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it isgood-and that is the real theater-totranscend them in the manner of play, bymeans of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair,to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put "inplay," show up, transform and reversethe systems which quietly order us about.”

WayLooksLongRealPlayShowsOrderGirlGamesBoysHairTheaterVicesDirtyIronyRitualTiedArbitraryVice VersaBourgeoisLong Hair
Author:Michel Foucault
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“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”

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Book:Past imperfect
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“I ain't never been in no college with famous people. I was a drifter for a while. I just was desperate to fit in with a group. Really, I was swimming. I was lost, treading water, trying to find my way. I wanted to play football. It didn't work out. I didn't really know what I wanted until I found acting in a theater department, and then everything just fell into place, and I had a passion about something. Then, I started living my life.”

PeopleKnowsWayTryingPlayWantedPassionFoundLostWaterActingGroupsFootballCollegeFitTheaterWork OutMy WayDesperateDepartmentSwimmingLiving My LifeTreadingDriftersTreading Water
Author:John Goodman
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“Something like the alleyway scene, where it's like a mini one-act play and you run the whole 18 pages of it, it's so much easier to get lost in it. That's why actors love doing theater so much, I guarantee you. It's refreshing to be able to do something where you don't have to be stopped every two seconds, and you can just play it out and it's done.”

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Author:Dylan O'Brien
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“If I'm not directing it, I need to be right in the director's ear so we can be talking about this." You do something like use the wrong music, the tone's off, and everything feels off". And I was like, "I'm not going down with this one. I wrote it, but I don't like that play." Then I thought, "Well, no one's producing my stuff, letting me star in it, and direct it at these theaters, so I'll just do them in comedy clubs."”

IfsNeedsFeelsWellsPlayUseStarsStuffTalkingComedyDirectorsDirectEarsTheaterClubsToneComedy Clubs
Author:Jake M. Johnson
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“Last House offended a lot of people. The results in the theaters, even in Boston, reminded me a bit of things from when I was studying theater of the absurd, and the rise and the appearance of Ionesco plays, and things like that. Thinking, "My God, people actually are getting into fistfights. People are having heart attacks. People are actually trying to get into the projection booth to destroy the print."”

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Author:Wes Craven
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“We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.”

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Book:Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself
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“For my entire career, I wanted to be a director. When I was in the theater, it was very difficult to get directing jobs, and I fell into the acting by default. I got in the habit of accepting whatever came my way. Not things that I disagreed with, though. It's not like I had aspirations - well, I did have aspirations to play Hamlet, which I ended up doing.”

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Author:James Cromwell
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“I believe in Mexico there's a big culture of moviegoing, both studio and indie. I think here in the US that's not the case because Latino communities don't have access to indie films. If you go into communities of color you will only find the big theater chains which only play the blockbuster genre films.”

IfsThinkingBelievePlayBigsFilmCultureI BelieveCommunityCasesColorTheaterStudiosI Believe InAccessChainsGenreMexicoBelieve In MeLatinoBlockbusterIndie Films
Author:Aurora Guerrero
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“The excitement of theatre is palpable but the frustrations, and the complete absence of a definitive evening - the play as text means practically nothing in a way - , there's no particular performance that is definitive in the way a novel is a solid object you hold in your hands and here it is. You can't say that about a play. If the novel gives us a sense of throbbing consciousness, theater is pure soul, beautiful and elusive.”

IfsWayGivingMeanSoulPlayHandsBeautifulConsciousnessNovelObjectsParticularPurePerformancesTheaterTheatreAbsenceEveningExcitementFrustrationElusivePure Soul
Author:Don DeLillo
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