Theatre Quotes

Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice.

There is only one necessary condition for the emergence of a new theatre, that the stage and auditorium should be open to the masses, should be able to contain a people and the actions of a people.

The Theatre of the Absurd is a theatrical embodiment and manifestation of existentialism. It is part reality and part nightmare

Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.

Although one may fail to find happiness in theatrical life, one never wishes to give it up after having once tasted its fruits.

Theatre is not supposed to represent psychology but passions, which is totally different. Its role is to represent the soul's different emotional states, and those of the mind, the world history.

The film [Stalker] needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

The secret of staying fresh in a show is to remember that the audience you're playing for that night has never seen it before.

There may be a time when we'll attend Weather Theaters to recall the sensation of rain.

Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.

A play visibly represents pure existing.

Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff didn't like the word 'horror'. They, like I, went for the French description: 'the theatre of the fantastique'.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

I'd like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be.

A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.

I was prepared for the theatre, but not for the nuts and bolts.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

The world was no doubt made, that it might be a theatre of the divine glory.

Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose.

We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets.

I think any classical training in the theatre is of enormous value.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place.

Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society. The greatest playwrights are moralists.

My real training as an actor was when I started doing theatre.

With the collapse of vaudeville new talent has no place to stink.

She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.

Growth as an actor and as a human being are synonymous.

The theatre is my drug. And my illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality.

I grew up overseas in Indonesia, and my school had a great art, music, and theatre program.

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor-to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.

If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along.

Theatre is immediate gratification

This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it's an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist.

An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Theatre is the safe place to do the unsafe things that need to be done.

I find that actors who are wanting to pursue tv or films don't seem to have much interest in classical theatre.

I understand the power and the alarm of words - Not those that they applaud from theatre-boxes, but those which make coffins break from bearers and on their four oak legs walk right away.

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut.

I think it is so much more fun to discover film in the movie theatre when there is so much anticipation about the movie.

I gave my life to the Group Theatre, because in it I'm building something for myself. What I build, I am.