Art Or Theatre Quotes & Sayings

Thus, for an adequate interpretation of the differences found between the classes or within the same class as regards their relation to the various legitimate arts, painting, music, theatre, literature etc., one would have to analyse fully the social uses, legitimate or illegitimate, to which each of the arts, genres, works or institutions considered lends itself. For example, nothing more clearly affirms one's 'class', nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music. — Pierre Bourdieu

The Arts are the only acceptable theatre of war for peace. — Bryant McGill

If you want to get into the shoes of someone, it's not just about seeing and hearing. It is also about what you touch and what you smell. Smell is so specific and so powerful. And this is the beauty of immersive theatre - it's something you cannot get in any other art form. I think this is the real future for theatre. — Lucien Bourjeily

I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. This supremacy of the theater derives from the fact that it is always "now" on the stage. — Thornton Wilder

If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I should have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it! — Eleanora Duse

There are so many people who want to be the next person on 'Home and Away,' or they just want to be on the cover of a magazine, and they don't really understand the craft. They're not interested in theatre, they're not interested in the art. — Gillian Alexy

If you want a commercial success - it's the confusion of commerce with art. A successful play is not considered to be the best written. It is the one that sells the most tickets. Those standards are destructive [to theatre]. — Edward Albee

The arts were a big part of my childhood. We went to the theatre and opera a lot as a family. We were not at all wealthy, but it was at a time when the arts were publicly funded and there were free tickets available. For someone like myself who wasn't that academically inclined, it was a great escape. — Sarah Jessica Parker

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by these emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience.
The aristocratic nature of art, however does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary, because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people. — Andrei Tarkovsky

I think so many great artists are flocking to LA because the downtown art scene is so vibrant, there is cheap living and you can really flourish as an artist there. There is an unbelievably supportive and really smart, talented theatre audience in LA full of young, hungry, vibrant people. It's something that sort of makes me think of what New York must have been like in its downtown theater scene in the 1980s - before my time. — Jon Bernthal

The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name. — Enid Bagnold

The main difference between the art of the actor and all other arts is that every other [non-performing] artist may create whenever he is in the mood of inspiration. But the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theatre. This is the chief secret of our art. — Constantin Stanislavski

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. — Thornton Wilder

In avant garde drama ... primitivism goes hand in hand with aesthetic experimentation designed to advance the technical progress of the art itself by exploring fundamental questions: What is a theatre? What is a play? What is an actor? What is a spectator? What is the relation between them all? What conditions serve this best? — C. D. Innes

We must infuse our lives with art. Our national leaders must be informed that we want them to use our taxes to support street theatre in order to oppose street gangs. We should have a well-supported regional theatre in order to oppose regionalism and. — Maya Angelou

As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien. — Gavin Bryars

Theatre is the art of looking at ourselves. — Augusto Boal

I think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way. — Iris Murdoch

Some believers accuse skeptics of having nothing left but a dull, cold, scientific world. I am left with only art, music, literature, theatre, the magnificence of nature, mathematics, the human spirit, sex, the cosmos, friendship, history, science, imagination, dreams, oceans, mountains, love, and the wonder of birth. That'll do for me. — Lynne Kelly

Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist. — Elizabeth Bowen

Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art. — Konstantin Stanislavski

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. — Oscar Wilde

Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell! — John Owen

I'm the classic example of alienation: I grew up in a middle-class household without art or books. I was going to be a chemical engineer until I went to the theatre for the first time at 16 and was blown away by it. — Richard Eyre

At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design. — Jim Henson

We know that modern art tends to realise these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience', transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible. — Anonymous

The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form. — Harold Prince

I love New York City. The energy, the theatre, the art, the food, the people, the parks and streets. But I could say the same of London or Paris, too. — Pierce Brosnan

Theatre was an art form that I didn't really respect, and because I wanted to shake it up and do different things on stage, I was able to combine all the things I'd learnt through writing on my own. — Martin McDonagh

I started using film as part of live theatre performance - what used to be called performance art - and I became intrigued by film. — Mike Figgis

People often say to me - how clever you are! How brilliant to be able to go from ballet to theatre as you do. I answer that it is not clever at all. It is the gift of looking at oneself coolly, of calculating the future objectively. I could see the danger signals as far as ballet was concerned before anyone else did, that's all. — Robert Helpmann

If politics is the art of the possible, theatre is the art of the impossible. — Herbert Blau

A film that is a true work of art transcends theatre and heartwarmingly changes lives. — A.D. Posey

New York City is one of the greatest places on the planet. You have the best in food, art, theatre, and definitely people-watching. — Matt Bomer

The Almost Free Theatre, the Fun Art Bus and the rest of them were phenomena of a decade which was simultaneously playful and desperately serious; and — Tom Stoppard

To save the Theatre, the Theatre must be destroyed, and actors and actresses all die of the Plague ... they make art impossible. — Eleanora Duse

I am not a complete idiot, but whether from weakness or laziness have no talent for thinking. I know only how to reflect: I am a mirror ... Logic does not exist for me. I float on the waves of art and life and never really know how to distinguish what belongs to the one or the other or what is common to both. Life unfolds for me like a theatre presenting a sequence of somewhat unreal sentiments; while the things of art are real to me and go straight to my heart. — Sviatoslav Richter

The theater has to impose itself on the public, and not the public on the theater ... The word "Art" should be written everywhere, in the auditorium and in the dressing rooms, before the word "Business" gets written there. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got there before we got there. — Tom Stoppard

I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare. — Kelly McGillis

After all, the world is not a stage-not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches ... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be ... Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it if he wants a safe seat in the audience-let him read someone else. — D.H. Lawrence

So you might say, 'Why do you end up making theatre in a world in which there is already too much of that? Creating layer upon layer of artifice?' Perhaps the function is to pierce through that cloud and show reality - so the function of art is to make things - to show: 'Hang on, this is real.' — Simon McBurney

Theatre critics have no special access to the truth. And there should be no objective truth to art. — Tim Crouch

Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious. — Piet Mondrian

The League of Independent Theater represents a coming together of actual artistic and theatrical forces that may yet undo the difficulty of our times in maintaining the highest artistic standards in a period of economic crisis. Who can save us from the downhill trend of our economy except the vigor of our arts? Theatre, music and education are our only hopes to lift our times beyond their despair and create a viable, prosperous culture. — Judith Malina

It was right then that I realized truly what the theatre is all about, which is that it's a prayer circle. It's just a big circle: we tell stories, and maybe we heal a heart or two, and we put something positive into the world, and we just do it - you know, we just create our circle with actors and collaborators and friends who take part in this art form. — Jennifer Tepper

People that went to art house theatre have more options, I used to go, but now think any movie can be delivered in a red envelope three months after it's released so why not watch it on my flat screen in the comfort of home. — Edward Burns

The requirements of the theatre are very great
a strong constitution, energy and unflagging purpose, charm of feature, these alone do not necessarily mean anything, and they must not be relied upon as assurances of an easy conquest of the public heart. It is not only a question of fitness for the work, but of long years of most diligent effort to master the technique of the theatre, and to develop whatever of the art instinct we may possess upon the simplest, broadest, and most human lines. — Julia Marlowe

I was sad to leave Europe in 1890, after my student days in Germany ... But then, once back in New York, I experienced an intense longing for Europe, for its vital tradition of music, theatre, art, craftsmanship ... I felt bewildered and lonely. How was I to use myself? — Alfred Stieglitz

Theatre is how I first encountered art on any level. — Patrick Marber

The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts. — David Hare

The theatre has always been voraciously omnivorous. Dramatists have always raided every medium to find grist to their mill: myths, folk tales, newspapers, novels, films, works of art of all kinds. — Lee Hall

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you. In short, entertainment fulfills our expectations. Art, on the other hand, makes no compromise for public taste as it inspires us to consider life's complexities and ambiguities. Art is the opposition testing the strength of societal and cultural values-values that are thoughtlessly adopted by the mass of individuals living unexamined lives and all who cannot imagine a different way of seeing life. — William Missouri Downs

I respect the system out there in Hollywood, I really do, but I'm very intent on art versus commerce. I want to do it all - film, TV and theatre - if it's the right job. — Laura Donnelly