Community Theater Quotes & Sayings

The idea that the Tony committee and the New York theater community as a whole have embraced 'Billy Elliot' is very, very exciting. — Eric Fellner

Growing up in Chicago, I was a theater nerd. That might be very cool on the East Coast, but in Chicago, it's really the athletes that come in No. 1 on the cool scale. Maybe musicians after that. Community theater? That's way down the list, my friend. — Johnny Galecki

But, yes, I learned everything working in theater. I learned the importance of community - I was constantly going to play readings, stand-up nights, improv. nights. — Elizabeth Meriwether

I was interning at a children's theater group in Kentucky - that was my first job out of college. I had jumped around a couple of regional theaters, and I was about to go back to Maine to work at a summer Shakespeare theater there. I didn't want to just jump around the country from gig to gig. I really wanted to go to a city and get involved in a theater scene and a theater community. — Timothy Simons

From the time I made my announcement that I was going to be an actor, I auditioned for community theater, did shows at Greenbrier, interned at the Cleveland Play House for a summer, took voice lessons, took ballet lessons. I did everything that Cleveland allowed me to do - everything that was available to me. — Reggie Lee

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new. — Tavi Gevinson

I worked at a movie theater in Tempe, Arizona, when I went to community college there. And I got fired because a sorority had rented out a theater to watch 'Titanic,' and they were being really rude to me while they were waiting for the movie. So as I tore their tickets, I told them the end of the movie. — Bill Hader

I'm a theater guy at heart; I love the theater. I was lucky enough to spend a good decade and a half in the New York theater community. — Thomas Sadoski

I live in Philadelphia, and my wife and I do a lot of theater out in the Philadelphia community. — Rob McClure

I went into performing for the community. Being backstage with your company of fellows is the best part of working in live theater. That energy, that combined focus, the synergy - it's addictive. — Jason Alexander

At that first preview, it was disorienting to watch more than 200 strangers stream into the theater, hailing from God-knows-where. They didn't know they were obstructing what had very recently been Andy's path to the stage, or occupying the spot where Tommy liked to preside, arms crossed, a couple of fingers to his lips. But as Alexander Hamilton kept trying to tell us, even the best-ordered societies need infusions of new blood to thrive. Keep it in mind the next time you go to the theater: Some gifted men and women have built a community in that room, and the immigrant is you. — Jeremy McCarter

I'm a theater guy and a filmmaker. So when my community was thrown up in the air by the gas industry, the way I could contribute was to do something in the film world. I never thought it would be a big deal at all. — Josh Fox

I transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like, chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it. — Tatiana Maslany

I fell in love with acting at a very young age, when I was 9 years old and started doing community theater. As far as wanting to make a profession out of it, I was about 13 or 14. When I first saw Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", when I saw Harrison Ford, I knew I wanted to be in movies. — Guy Wilson

I certainly did plays in high school and community theater, and I want to get back on the stage. — Busy Philipps

I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn't like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies. — Willem Dafoe

I think that theater is a unique way to communicate with people as they gather together with other people they may not even know. It creates a sense of shared community for the time of the performance that hopefully carries over into other aspects of the audience's life because they have shared this experience together. — Pearl Cleage

I did community theater in Georgia and called myself a ballet dancer. — Laura Slade Wiggins

I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it. — Nick Offerman

When I was a teenager, I continued to visit imaginary places by spending all my free time at our local community theater. Whether I acted in a play or worked backstage, the world of Tennessee Williams or Shakespeare always seemed more real to me than the dreary life of high school. — Mary Pope Osborne

My parents were involved in community theater in New Jersey. Instead of hiring a baby sitter, they would take me with them. So my love of acting seeped in from watching my parents and seeing them having fun. — Jane Krakowski

I was inadvertently raised in the 'gay community.' I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful thirty-somethings. — Darren Criss

I used to do community theater with Conor Oberst. — Andrew Rannells

I went to this massive co-ed school for the first time when I was 16. Everyone there had been together since elementary school, and I found it quite difficult, especially when I'd never stepped into a classroom with boys. So I started looking out in the community for a social outlet. I started getting involved in student films and community theater. Acting began as a hobby. — Holland Roden

I started in community theater at 7 years old. I loved being on stage and performing. At the time, I didn't correlate that the stuff I was doing on stage was the same thing that I was watching in my favorite films. — Jessica Lucas

I'm from Washington state - a pretty small town there called Puyallup. I was really into the arts there. I sang in choirs and did singing competitions. I also did a whole lot of theater; I did high school, and then I started doing some community theater. I decided that was the kind of thing I wanted to study in college. — Sarah Butler

I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.' — Richard Dreyfuss

The Sherry Theater, which I named after my mom, is a place I can go. I do want to give back to the community. There are so many people out there who want to be seen and heard, and get connected. — Scott Haze

As a kid, I was a huge fan of movies and acting. My mom was in the sort of community theater, and I always hung around down there, and I was a massive fan of everything I'm kind of involved in now. But fairly ordinary and cheeky. — Simon Pegg

If you want to be an actor and you love acting, you can do it whether you're doing something else or not. You can be connected with community theater or make your own little movies. But if you want to be a movie star, you've got a tough road ahead of you. — Alan Arkin

Being a part of the theater community has been important to me from the time I was a child, through my parents. — Lily Rabe

Banding together with others to achieve a common pursuit cannot help but engender a strong feeling of community, whether you're baling hay or mounting A Chorus Line in a tiny theater space. — Nick Offerman

It's not like I had big dreams to go to California and become an actor. I loved doing my shows at school and community theater, and I probably would have settled in New York because it was closer. I was going to go to NYU. — Christine Taylor

Dialogue is action. It's not separate from it. Action is doing something. Dialogue is talking, and talking is doing something. Even better when dialogue manifests while characters do shit: drive a car, execute some baddies, make an omelet, build a sinister dancing robot whose mad mechanical choromania will reduce the world to cinders. Characters don't need to stand in one place in space and talk. They're not puppets in community theater. Find language with movement and motion. — Anonymous

In the theater you create a moment, but in that moment, there is a touch, a twinkle of eternity. And not just eternity, but community ... That connection is a sense of life for me. — Edward Teller

It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically ... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence. — Bruce Catton

'Yosemite' opened doors for me in the New York theater community in amazing ways. There's a whole world of fearless young theater makers here who put shows together on a shoestring budget and with gigantic hearts. — Kathryn Erbe

My ma and pa are both very artistic, so I suppose it's in my blood. But my ma's the one who was into theater and such. I owe my love of it to her. If she didn't drag me to small community workshops when I was a wee little lad or exposed me to anything artistic for that matter, I wouldn't be who I am today. — Grey Damon

My mom wasn't a fan of public school systems. She was scared of letting me go. So, she home-schooled my siblings and I, and she was desperately trying to find something for me to do for an extracurricular. She was trying to socialize me, so she put me in community theater, and I was instantly taken by it. — Britt Robertson

As an actor I worked for seven years with a community theater company based in London. We used improvisation techniques to take stories to young people who wouldn't normally have access to them - in prisons, hospitals, young offender's units, youth clubs and housing estates. — Jenny Downham

I was doing community theater since I was about nine. — Malcolm-Jamal Warner

I first got into acting when I was 14, coming back from a junior high school basketball game. My mom picked me up and she had been mentioning, prior to that, this community production of 'Godspell', a couple towns over. I was reluctant, at first, and she bribed me with some great dinner that was in that town, neighboring the theater. — Skylar Astin

To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community. This is true whether we understand our creativity to be begetting and nourishing our children, making music, doing theater, gardening, writing, teaching, running a business, painting, constructing houses, or sharing the healing arts of medicine and therapy. — Matthew Fox

I was a dancer from about the age of four, so I was always performing and forcing my parents to watch my brother and I do 'Jesus Christ Super Star' in the living room. My first step was community theater, and then I started to do films. — Tatiana Maslany

I feel so fortunate to have grown up in a town like Kansas City that has such a vibrant theater community. — Katherine McNamara

In terms of theater, there's not a more supportive theater community than in New York. It's really kind of a real thrill to go there. I mean, don't forget, I'm a boy from the suburbs of Sydney, so getting to New York is a huge, huge thrill. — Hugh Jackman

Few things would gratify me as much as a rediscovered respect for things belonging to others. Not abusing the property of others (or that of the community) is one of the ways in which we respect others. It is an essential part of being considerate guests, no matter where we are: in an airplane, in a friend's home, in a movie theater, in a doctor's office, in a public library, or in a public square. — P. M. Forni

As a kid, I was fortunate that we grew up near a children's theater, with all different classes and things; so as a kid I took classes there and as I got into high school I did all the community theater stuff. Then I came to college in New York and studied acting there. But most of the training I got was from working. Working with really great people. — Andrew Rannells

I was 20 years old, working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi, just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like, 'Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?' But I took a class, and the teacher thought that I had potential, so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning. — Cory Monteith

I think theater is a core need of a community. — Sam Underwood

I love the theater community and theater life, and would love to figure out the distinctive differences between Broadway and the West End. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I love the experience the theater creates for a community of people. — David Binder

I always wanted to be an actor. It sort of prevented that whole - I never had any of that kind of angsty period old and doing musicals at camp and community theater and plays at school; it was just always what I most enjoyed and always what I intended to pursue. — Joshua Malina

The love, support, and respect the members of the theater community have for one another is unparalleled. Say what you want about us wacky drama-types, but one thing that makes our business special is our loyalty, our fierce commitment to one another, and our mutual respect. — Monica Raymund

With TV, there's a continuum with the crew and the cast so you feel like you have a sense of community in a way, which is similar to theater. — Mary-Louise Parker

I get very excited when I go to a show - there are all these people who don't know each another who've come together to celebrate this amazing ritual. The making of community that theater provides is quite profound. — Hugh Hardy

Of course I wanted an agent from the time I was like 5, but my mother was like, 'No, you're going to be normal, you're going to go to school, you're going to get good grades, you're going to play soccer, and if you do well, if you keep your grades up, you can do one community-theater show a year.' — Laura Benanti

I just thought I would work in a hair salon and do community theater. — Christina Hendricks

To be working in the theater steadily and to be recognized and appreciated by the community means the world. — Lily Rabe

Well, ever since I was little, I knew that singing was what I wanted to do, and then I got into, you know, doing drama club and community theater. — Jordin Sparks

Secretly, I'm in awe of Broadway performers. I would love to perform at that level. I love the exchange with the audience. I love being able to sing and dance to express your emotions and the community and friendships that are formed when working on a theater piece. — Brianna Brown

To do exciting, empowering research and leave it in academic journals and university libraries is like manufacturing unaffordable medicines for deadly diseases. We need to share our work in ways that people can assimilate, not in the private languages and forms of scholars...Those who are hungriest for what we dig up don't read scholarly journals and shouldn't have to. As historians we need to either be artists and community educations or find people who are and figure out how to collaborate with them. We can work with community groups to create original public history projects that really involved people. We can see to it that our work gets into at least the local popular culture through theater, murals, historical novels, posters, films, children's books, or a hundred other art forms. We can work with elementary and high school teachers to create curricula. Medicinal history is a form of healing and its purposes are conscious and overt. — Aurora Levins Morales

When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out. — Kurt Fuller

We know the original relation of the theater and the cult of the Dead: the first actors separated themselves from the community by playing the role of the Dead: to make oneself up was to designate oneself as a body simultaneously living and dead: the whitened bust of the totemic theater, the man with the painted face in the Chinese theater, the rice-paste makeup of the Indian Katha-Kali, the Japanese No mask ... Now it is this same relation which I find in the Photograph; however 'lifelike' we strive to make it (and this frenzy to be lifelike can only be our mythic denial of an apprehension of death), Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead. — Roland Barthes

I love singing! I was a musical theater girl in high school. We were always singing and dancing around, and just doing little community theaters and high school musicals. Then, when I got to NYU, I focused more on drama. — Katie Lowes

A musical, like most religions, provides the audience or followers with a sense of belonging. Religious services, on the other hand, with their staged performances, invigorating songs, popular wisdom and shared experience, are almost a form of community theater. — Lisa Randall

I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also, I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness. — August Wilson

I would advise young aspiring theater artists to do as many shows as possible. It doesn't matter if it's in the basement of a church, in school, or in community theater. Do them wherever you can; big parts or small, it doesn't matter. — Rob McClure

I really wanted to go to a city and get involved in a theater scene and a theater community. I had some friends who had moved out to Chicago and had said really good things about it and about the work. I didn't care at that time about making money. — Timothy Simons

I love the theater so much, and it's where I feel most comfortable. I love the people and the community. — Katie Finneran

You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get ... It's about experience and building community and catalyzing dialogue and bringing people together. — Diane Paulus

The theater community at large, I have to say, has just been so warm and so welcoming, and that's not something I'm as used to. — Sara Bareilles

I love the community of theater. There is something about the camaraderie: People who show up eight times a week to do a show. It's unlike any other business. It's just lovely. You feel like you're in a family. — Billy Porter

Those of us who are writers and have to perform to communities that aren't used to coming to book events, I would recommend taking some theater. — Sandra Cisneros

With me, growing up in a theater family and having them be so supportive, from the jump, and being a part of this theater community where the brass ring is working, wherever that is, and then to play a character where he's not really concerned with that and is really just concerned with the monetary aspect of the job, and then to be identified with someone who is the antithesis of your energy and where you come from, has been a very interesting and surreal ride. — Jeremy Piven

The white dress, made of billowy fabric like a cargo parachute, made her look like the female Boss Hogg trying out for a part in a community theater presentation of Brigadoon. — Jon Konrath

I dropped out in middle school. I dropped out in, towards the beginning of the ninth grade. And then I started studying -I started taking acting classes at a, well first I was like in a community theater at that time in Torrance, California, so I finished up like my season with that community theater just acting in, you know, acting in a small part on this play or a big part on that play or a stage manager or assistant stage manager in another play. — Quentin Tarantino