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Theatre Quotes

Browse 1773 quotes about Theatre.

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Theatre Quotes

“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.”

NeedsHumansHelpingFeelingsActionFieldsParticularTypeRelationTheaterHistoricalInsightTheatreReleaseImpulseHuman RelationsThoughts And Feelings
Book:Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic
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“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you-trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.”

IfsGivingMayUseHandsPassionSpeakLinesActingSawsToo MuchPlayerAirPrayingSpeechMouthsTownsTongueTheatreAcquireSpokesI PrayBegetsTempestTemperanceWhirlwindStage ActorsTheatre Acting
Author:William Shakespeare
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“The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness.”

IfsSometimesAgeArtistNationsCreativeEnvironmentProduceWorkersTheatreViolentNervousCraftsWorking ItDisturbedNervous SystemDisturbanceCreative Work
Book:New Selected Essays: Where I Live
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“There can be no conquest to the man who dwells in the narrow and small environment of a groveling life, and there can be no vision to the man the horizon of whose vision is limited by the bounds of self. But the great things of the world, the great accomplishments of the world, have been achieved by men who had high ideals and who have received great visions. The path is not easy, the climbing is rugged and hard, but the glory at the end is worthwhile.”

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Author:Matthew Henson
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“Theatre artists are essentially sort of charlatans and thieves, I mean that's the tradition that we come from, so I have absolutely no, I make no bones about the fact that I steal from here and I take from there, and we all do it, that's perfectly all right, that's the nothing, there's nothing new in the world, there's nothing actually new in the way that you do something, but the point is is how do you take something and use it to articulate what is essentially a core of any given theatrical production.”

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Author:Simon McBurney
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“The other, the other aspect when I say I'm an actor is that as an actor you make this imaginative leap into being somebody else, that's to say the muscle of the imagination is as important as any other of the muscles in your body, and so it is something about this instinct in space and time which for me I associate with being an actor rather than a director.”

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Author:Simon McBurney
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“I sometimes feel that I am trying to dig in the world around me. I'm involved in another kind of archaeology to look for another kind of truth, and the moment I find, the moment I am separated from that life, the moment I am sort of in a world, every time I have gone out and performed in the, in the cinema for example, if you do two or three films on the trot you suddenly have this impression that you're becoming separate or separated from the world around you.”

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Author:Simon McBurney
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“The only way that you can keep moving forward, finding other ways of expressing things about this increasingly complicated world that we live in, is by listening and observing not only to life around you but to the other people who are in the room. It's not about a sort of, you know, a sense that you have to be democratic about these things, it's a question of creativity that the process of making theatre is a collaborative process, and it is not in, it is not a question of, you know, I have no interest in paying lip service to it, for me it's absolutely fundamental.”

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Author:Simon McBurney
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“When you make something, if you are a painter or a writer, a degree, or a sculptor or whatever or a musician, a degree of energy is required to make it, and I'm not sure that it is always aggressive, but when you have a great deal of energy it can appear to be more aggressive than it is. In fact, I mean you can talk about a waterfall being aggressive, but in fact it is just a very powerful forward movement of energy, and although I think sometimes my engine house is a kind of anger.”

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Author:Simon McBurney
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“Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.”

IfsThinkingMenFirstsWellsPersonsTwoDifferentFactsYoungMotherResultsMistakeEnemyRichMovementDramaDiscoveryMy FriendsTheaterTheatreYoung ManDisguiseAdventurerWell DressedNoblemenGood Drama
Author:W. H. Auden
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“The drama's altar isn't on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it's roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.”

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Book:Autobiographies III: Rose and Crown and Sunset and Evening Star
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“By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.”

KnowsMenMayMeanPlayHelpingFeelingsPassionBusinessAudienceOughtDramaTheaterTheatreInventionAccomplishedPrimeRoutesPlaywrightNew Relationship
Book:Miller Plays: 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge
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“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.”

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Book:The Essential Noël Coward Compendium: The Very Best of His Work, Life and Times
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“It is through you, actors, that the forces which are understood by millions and that tell of everything that is beautiful on earth, find expression. The forces which reveal to people the happiness of living in a widened consciousness and in the joy of creative work for the whole world. You, the actors of a theatre, which is one of the centres of human culture, will never be understood by the people if you are unable to reflect the spiritual needs of your time, the now in which you are living.”

PeopleIfsWorldNeedsHumansWholeEarthBeautifulSpiritualJoyCultureActorsForceConsciousnessMillionsCreativeExpressionUnderstoodTheatreWhole WorldCentreCreative Work
Author:Constantin Stanislavski
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“Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from - hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.”

ThinkingWorldWayWantHumansLittlesArtMightWantedPainWaterTakenBuiltHatredTheatreTyrannyLandscapeFascinatedIntriguedDrop Of Water
Book:Wyrd Sisters: (Discworld Novel 6)
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