Best theater & playwright Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“In theater, the playwright is the boss, period. The decisions will go through him or her. In movies, the writer is pretty far down on the list.”

Decision Periods Theater Lists Boss Playwright

Author:Tracy Letts

“One does not go to the theater to see life and nature; one goes to see the particular way in which life and nature happen to look to a cultivated, imaginative and entertaining man who happens, in turn, to be a playwright.”

Men Way Looks Doe Happens Turns Particular Theater Entertaining Imaginative Playwright

Book:The Critic and the Drama

Source: The Critic and the Drama

“I know all about improvisation and the free-form that mirrors the chaos of our time, but I do like to feel that the playwright has done some work before I got there.”

Knows Feels Done Form Theater Mirrors Chaos Our Time Playwright Improvisation

Book:Penny Candy

Source: Penny Candy

“When you think about it, what other playwrights are there besides O'Neill, Tennessee and me?”

Thinking Theater Playwright Tennessee

Author:Mae West

“if there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?”

Ifs World Firsts Together Spirit Artist Theater Ghost Playwright Get Together Spirit World

Book:Black Oxen

Source: Black Oxen

“I've taken [acting] class with Larry Moss, who's more kind of in the theater world, so he's really educated me about playwrights.”

World Kind Acting Class Taken Theater Educated Playwright Larry Moss Acting Classes

Author:Eva Mendes

“I think in theater the playwright is king. Those words are unchangeable. They are the reason that everything else flows from.”

Thinking Reason Kings Flow Theater Playwright Unchangeable

Author:Greta Gerwig

“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.”

Knows Actors Know How Theater Invention Playwright

Author:Israel Horovitz

“If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.”

Ifs Trying Eye Lost Cases Worst Theater Theatre Elephants Playwright Crossings Nineteen Alps Snowstorms

Book:Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself

Source: Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself

“I've had a long association with the theater over the years but I had never produced a play and it was something that I'd always wanted to do.The movies moved away from dramas, and I think that I'm very excited by the opportunity to take smart writing that takes risks and see it on stage. It's exciting to see that engagement between the audience and the playwright.”

Thinking Writing Years Long Play Wanted Opportunity Audience Risk Stage Drama Smart Exciting Theater Moved Excited Engagement Association Playwright

Author:Colin Callender

“I find it very invigorating having Ken Lonergan, who's an established, Pulitzer-nominated playwright doing Howards End, or Chris Hampton who's won an Oscar writing a TV series, or having an actor like Mark Rylance, who is probably England's leading theater actor, in the lead in Wolf Hall.”

Writing Ends Actors Tvs Mark England Theater Series Halls Oscars Playwright Lead In Tv Series Invigorating Howards End Hamptons

Author:Colin Callender

“One of the things that's different about London and the English market is that theater and film and television are all based in London. It's not quite the same as in the States where if the playwright here wants a successful TV or film career, they're whisked away by Hollywood.”

Ifs Want Different States Film Careers Successful Television Tvs Hollywood Theater London Playwright Film And Television

Author:Colin Callender

“I started in theater and I wanted to write plays, but I never really found an original voice as a playwright.”

Writing Play Wanted Found Voice Theater Originals Playwright

Author:Atom Egoyan

“I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.”

Thinking Needs Believe Together I Believe Directors Theater I Believe In Working Together Playwright

Author:John Guare

“The churches had left me cold, but I thought there's got to be a God. I remember going out, this is in Charleston, South Carolina, and my desire then was to be a playwright, and I was studying theater, and I went out one night, late at night, and I asked, "What can God be if there is a God?" I wasn't sure there was a God, but if there is a God, what must he be? Well, he can't be a judge, who's up there just waiting for us to make a mistake so he can clap us into hell. There's got to be something more than that.”

“I wanted to be a director first to protect my writing. I'm a playwright and you don't need to protect your writing when you're in the theater because everyone's there to protect the writing. When I had an idea for a film that I really cared about as my own, I wanted to direct it, and then I immediately became interested in directing in and of itself because it's such a deep art. You suddenly have all these tools at your disposal to tell the story.”

Needs Writing Firsts Art Ideas Stories Wanted Film My Own Directors Protect Tools Direct Theater Playwright

Author:Kenneth Lonergan

“If you're a playwright, unless you're really lacking in get-up-and-go, you can always get your play up somewhere. You can't necessarily make a living doing it, but theater is about meeting an audience. Plays are not easier to write necessarily, they take less time to write. If you get them up, it's a much more rough-and-tumble kind of existence. I think it's, from my perspective, easier than novel writing.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Kind Play Existence Novel Audience Perspective Easier Theater Meetings Get Up Rough Lacking Playwright Novel Writing

Author:Tony Kushner

“Being on a film set is like being in tech forever. In theater, when you finally finish rehearsing, you go onstage and you do the lights and the sets and you make the machine of the production work. It takes usually about ten days in the theater, two or three weeks if it's a really big musical. I mean, it's hell on earth. You just sit around forever while they adjust the lights. And every playwright with half a brain runs for the hills when tech starts because it's so boring, and you don't want to talk to the director because the director is running this giant machine.”

“I think I'll always be a better playwright than a pundit, but I believe that writers should be public intellectuals and that theater, even more than film, is a place of public debate.”

Thinking Should Believe Film I Believe Theater Debate Playwright Pundits

Author:Tony Kushner

“The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.”

People Writing Heart Church Prayer Events Mass Theater Longing Constructs Playwright

Author:Marsha Norman

“I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?”

“I do come from a theater background, where the playwright is optimal and king and you have to serve the playwright. So I am, of course, a huge fan of scripted everything.”

Courses Fans Huge Kings Theater Backgrounds Playwright Optimal

Author:Skylar Astin

“A playwright... is... the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about.”

Ifs Knows Writing Art Talking Audience Hell Paper Theater Wave Length Playwright

Book:The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller

Source: The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller

“It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.”

Years Duty Theater Sacred Ireland Playwright Inarticulate

Book:Tynan on theatre

Source: Tynan on theatre

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Theater Quotes