Quotessence
Home / Topics / Theater Quotes

Theater Quotes

Browse 2622 quotes about Theater.

Related topics

Theater Quotes

“Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.”

“Memory is strange. Scientifically, it is not a mechanical means of repeating something. I can think a thousand times about when I broke my leg at the age of ten, but it is never the same thing which comes to mind when I think about it. My memory of this event has never been, in reality, anything except the memory of my last memory of that event. This is why I use the image of a palimpsest - something written over something partially erased - that is what memory is for me. It's not a film you play back in exactly the same way. It's like theater, with characters who appear from time to time.”

“Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.”

“When I started acting in the film industry when I was 16 years old, in 1980, I was going to all the revival theaters in Los Angeles. They were playing mostly films from the '60s and '70s, some from the early '20s and '30s, before that Hays commission. Those films did question things a lot, and there definitely was a switch in 1934. You can see very distinctly in 1934, it's harder to understand what the real culture was. Films made before 1934, you can really kind of see the racism, sexism, drug use, etc. that was going on at that time. And then it was all stopped.”

“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."”

“I know a bit about his [Sirk] life, but it's more about his style than biography. He was European and came out of a theater background, and could easily be defined as 'Brechtian.' He was expressionistic in his films, and was an example of those intensely intellectual artists who ended up working for American studios, and was handed the Ladies Home Journal and asked to adapt the stories for the screen. He found ways to use his artistry to make them interesting and nuanced, while critiquing American values in the process.”

“Watering places - the sports of the field - cards! never-failing cards! - the assembly - the theater - all contribute their aid - amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, 'to fill up the void of a listless and languid life;' and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy.”

“Chiron, I don't think the attic is the proper place for our new Oracle, do you?" "No, indeed." Chiron looked a lot better now that Apollo had worked some medical magic on him. "Rachel may use a guest room in the Big House for now, until we give the matter more thought." "I'm thinking a cave in the hills," Apollo mused. "With torches and a big purple curtain over the entrance . . . really mysterious. But inside, a totally decked-out pad with a game room and one of those home theater systems.”

“Well, he's got a much bigger circus to play with, and he has a lot more financing available, and he has a lot more time available. I think that makes a huge difference. I think he instinctively knows how to make films and all the different ways that you can make stuff. He's very gadget-wise, and he's very smart about all the different things that are available to a filmmaker nowadays, and he makes very good use of them. He has a theater in his house, for God's sake. It has proper curtains on it and everything. It's pretty wild.”