Theatre Quotes

Acting is not being emotional but being able to express emotion.

Film-making has become a kind of hysterical pregnancy.

Opening night is the night before the play is ready to open.

The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.

The live entertainment Canadians like most is the intimate review a collection of songs and sketches preferably with a satirical bias.

When the audience knows you know better it's satire but when they think you can't do any better it's corn.

The person who wants to make it has to sweat. There are no short cuts. And you've got to have the guts to be hated.

A fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he is not alone in the way he feels about himself.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

Many plays certainly mine are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

You need three things in the theatre - the play the actors and the audience and each must give something.

From the point of view of the playwright then the essence of a tragedy or even of a serious play is the spiritual awakening or regeneration of his hero.

Hamlet is the tragedy of tackling a family problem too soon after college.

The whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me Ma.'

All the movies used to be 'colossal'. Now they're all 'frank'. I think I liked 'colossal' better.

By increasing the size of the keyhole today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

We do not go (to the theatre) like our ancestors to escape from the pressure of reality so much as to confirm our experience of it.

Actor-manager - one to whom the part is greater than the whole.

I know it was wonderful but I don't know how I did it.

Very few people go to the doctor when they have a cold they go to the theatre instead.

The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many moods I especially cherish the chin commanding the chin in doubt and the chin at bay.

There are five stages to an actor's career: who is Herschel Bernardi? get me Herschel Bernardi get me a Herschel Bernardi type get me a young Herschel Bernardi and who is Herschel Bernardi?

On stage I make love to twenty-five thousand people then I go home alone.

In Hollywood if you don't have happiness you send out for it.

Playing Shakespeare is very tiring. You never get to sit down unless you're a king.

Theatre is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means a complexity of words movements gestures that convey a vision of the world inexpressible in any other way.

As an actor he should be an extra in police line-ups.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

Theatre is a must for actors. They should try it at least once. It makes you disciplined, teaches you to respect your work, and boosts your confidence as an actor.

It's not called the Theatre of Dreams for nothing.

I got amazing training both with Theatre Sports... back in Edmonton, Alberta - I can't give those people enough credit - and the daytime drama I did. Incredible training, both of them.

Theatre sports is the best improv training period.

Theatre is a sacred space for actors. You are responsible you are in the driving-seat.

What's great about collaborating is getting to work with wonderful people. That's what theatre is about: other people getting you to give your best, and getting everyone else's best out of them.

The strength of British theatre should be that these actors in their middle years know what they're doing and are good at it. Not rich, not famous, but making a living.

I started elocution lessons because I was being teased, and I had a brilliant drama teacher. At the age of 14, I appeared at the National Theatre in 'The Crucible.'

I used to be one of the lead actors of a theatre group called Hetu when I was in medical school. Prithvi Theatre was our stomping ground. I'd got many positive reviews.

The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king truth comes riding on a donkey symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!

I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.

Theatre was my first love. I can't take the theatre out of me. And I wouldn't want to. To me, it's home.