Great Theatre Quotes & Sayings

there is a dense crowd; outside the Betting Rooms it is like a great struggle at a theatre door - in the days of theatres; or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon temple - in the days of Spurgeon. An — Charles Dickens

It's great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people. — Phil Daniels

It's a whole different kind of anxiety. But the great thing about doing a theatre job is that once the ball starts rolling you just have to go with it, it's inexorable. — Emily Watson

I took theatre and stuff in college, then I took a bunch of different acting classes here in L.A. Sometimes when I have a hard audition, I'll call my acting coach and he'll come help me. I actually get more nervous in acting class than I do at an actual audition. It's actually a really great way to get over your nerves. — Melissa Ordway

It's hard to get people up and out to shows, but 'The Walworth Farce' has masses of energy and will attract a crowd who don't always come to the theatre, which is great. — Domhnall Gleeson

It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something. — Don Cheadle

I was lucky enough to see the original cast of 'In the Heights.' This one blew my mind. The infusion of Latin, hip hop and rap with musical theatre, great storytelling and talent was a powerful combination to me during a time when I'd not been moved by much! — Josh Young

You'll never really be great unless you aim high. — Stella Adler

It was in New York, and I've always wanted to film in New York. And the writer was a teenage friend of mine. We did youth theatre together when we were 16 and always had a dream of making a film together. And ten years later, we've done it. So it's great. — Rosamund Pike

To be honest I don't think I was any great shakes as a theatre actor because everything I was doing was really small in size - intimate. — Robert Carlyle

Doing gigs is great, but when you come together for a production in the theatre, that is something I have a lot of respect for. — Eliza Doolittle

Ever since I was little it was programmed into me that London is where great theatre occurs and all the big shows you love start there. — Zach Braff

There is something so great about film and television where you can convey an emotion in
the blink of an eye which you would perhaps not be able to do to the back row of a theatre, like
over 1000 seats, and there is something so subtle and beautiful about that too. — Anna Camp

He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life and can not imagine that there can be happiness in life. This is the century that has shaped all the conquering arms against this elusive adversary called boredom. Love, Poetry, Music, Theatre, Painting, Architecture, Court, Salons, Parks and Gardens, Gastronomy, Letters, Arts, Science, all contributed to the satisfaction of physical appetites, intellectual and even moral refinement of all pleasures, all the elegance and all the pleasures. The existence was so well filled that if the seventeenth century was the Great Age of glories, the eighteenth was that of indigestion. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Perigord

If you want more people to come to the theatre, don't put the prices at £50. You have to make theatre inclusive, and at the moment the prices are exclusive. Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience. — Catherine Tate

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. — Robertson Davies

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances. — Kevin Spacey

I wanted to be a therapist if the acting didn't work. I also did a lot waitressing and odd jobs. I'd audition but couldn't get hired to save my life. I'd do Off-Broadway theatre and that was great and I was excited and thrilled, feeling like, 'Well, it's Off-Broadway, but there's still the Broadway in there.' — Jennifer Aniston

Even if the play is great, every day in theatre you have to question everything because the audience is new every day. I love that. — Clotilde Hesme

I was going to be a High School teacher. I was studying at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, up in Canada. I was also acting in a wonderfully supportive theatre community in Edmonton. There's a lot of support for theatre there. So, I was having a great time, but I didn't consider acting as a serious career initially, because even the most successful actors that I know in Edmonton are not super successful. Acting over there is just not a success-oriented career. — Nathan Fillion

I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college. — Wesley Snipes

My plan was to go to New York and do some theatre, and then I got the script for 'Psych.' I was like, 'Ahh - just as I thought I was out, you pulled me back in!' I had a great meeting with the show creator and we laid out the parameters to make the show work: what I would do, what he would let me do. — James Roday

I've done great theatre, great films and had a lot of opportunities in television. I also love to sing, and I've been able to do that once or twice in the television shows. — Scott Bakula

I got the O.B.E because I represent England outside of England more ... but thinking of me as an actor, I haven't done all the classical theatre, all the great roles. Think of Helen Mirren and me. Helen, who I adore, is a friend - should be Dame. I am the rebel, the revolutionary on the side. — Charlotte Rampling

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

I'd love to do more theatre and acting. I attended a performing arts high school in London, and it would be great to be able to put all of that training to use again. — Derek Hough

I was 10, and I played Jim Hawkins in 'Treasure Island' at school, and this great Liverpudlian actor called Andrew Schofield - he was Johnny Rotten in 'Sid And Nancy' - came to watch it, and he had a word with my mum and dad afterwards and told them I should have a go at the Everyman youth theatre. I've never looked back. — Stephen Graham

Television is great but for me, as a performer, nothing compares to a live theatre show. — Bruce Forsyth

I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another. — Adam Rapp

The entire universe is a great theatre of mirrors. — Alice Bailey

Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide of a magic-lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric - strange shadows dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given for her - a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She was in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the selfishness of others found its account, and there was nothing to avert the sacrifice but the modesty of her youth. — Henry James

He stared to sea. I gave up all ideas of practicing medicine. In spite of what I have just said about the wave and the water, in those years in France I am afraid I lived a selfish life. That is, I offered myself every pleasure. I traveled a great deal. I lost some money dabbling in the theatre, but I made much more dabbling on the Bourse. I gained a great many amusing friends, some of whom are now quite famous. But I was never very happy. I suppose I was fortunate. It took me only five years to discover what some rich people never discover - that we all have a certain capacity for happiness and unhappiness. And that the economic hazards of life do not seriously affect it. — John Fowles

Sitcoms are like summer stock. You put it up in three days, and then you do it in front of an audience, so it's a really great transition from theatre into camera work. — Susan Egan

Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre. — Israel Horovitz

Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor's job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story. — Sylvester McCoy

Even though I had a great deal of respect for children's TV and theatre, it wasn't my intent to specialize solely in that area. I did indeed want to work on shows like "Sesame Street" and I am honored to be even a small part of that legacy, but I also wanted to do characters that had wider vocabulary and satirical humor. — Stephanie D'Abruzzo

Places like the National Theatre or Sheffield, these great engines of theatre, make us cutting edge because they can be experimental. They can do plays that nobody else can afford to do in ways nobody else can afford to do. — Toby Stephens

The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors. — Nicolas Roeg

I grew up in a community of theatre, and I always loved musicals. From a young age, the first present I ever wanted was a video camera. For me it was a great outlet to be creative. — Christopher Egan

I kind of got lost down a road of TV and film, so it's great to come back to theatre. — Richard C. Armitage

Some great actors have had substantial training and some have not. I am biased toward the well-trained theatre actor because I am passionate about theatre and the special devotion it takes to pursue that love. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a correlation between success as a working actor and training. Mark Duplass ("The League," Your Sister's Sister) has never had a formal acting class in his life. As long as you're a good, compelling actor, you will book jobs. Actors who graduate from Julliard (Jessica Chastain) book jobs and actors who have never had an acting class in their life work regularly in both TV and film. — Cathy Reinking

I think I come from a theatrical tradition where, if you look at the great theatrical actors of the British theatre, they took enormous pride in being wildly different from one role to the next. That's the tradition I come from. — James Purefoy

People see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin. — Charles Bukowski

Everyone has an opportunity to be great because everyone has an opportunity to serve. — Martin Luther King Jr.

As we get older ... I don't know a single person who has devoted their life to musical theatre who hasn't had a couple of misses as well as a bunch of hits. The misses, we learn a great deal from them. — Maury Yeston

The fog turned a strange yellow, then orange, then black. The gilded winged statue Victory at Buckingham Palace retreated into mist. St. Paul's was a hazy outline, ghostlike in the gloom. La Traviata at the Sadler's Wells theatre was terminated midway because the audience could no longer see the singers on stage. Pedestrians noticed how everything below the waist disappeared. Knees, shoes, dogs became indistinguishable. The Great Smog was days and nights of people and things passing out of sight and existence. It seemed a fitting time for a mother to evaporate. — Kyo Maclear

I started to respect older actors when I was young and then contemporary actors later on. Then I learned respect for comedy. When I was first doing theatre, I thought of it as just a means to become Sarah Bernhardt or someone like that. But acting with young people has been a great learning experience. — Anne Meara

When the sun sets beautifully, other beauties rise. Nature is a theatre; when one great player leaves the scene, another great player immediately enters. The play always continues excellently. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential. — Robert Morley

I strive for perfection, but of course it can never be perfect. I'm never satisfied at the end of a performance. But the great thing about live theatre is that every night you get another chance to get it right. — Anthony Warlow

We had a great dramatics department in school, so I did a lot of plays and theatre there. Later, when I was the captain of our student's ward, I figured out that if you find something you really love to do, you don't have to work for the rest of your life! You can just have fun and still excel in it because you enjoy what you do. — Randeep Hooda

What is so liberating about this whole business is when you see that big movies are going to come out and then you see them up in Malibu in the little triplex theatre a week later and you think, this is show business. This is the great movie career. And it's all funded in the shoe box. — Anthony Hopkins

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

The earth is an orbiting speck in incomprehensible vastness. The histories of our civilizations, our accomplishments and secrets, great good and evil - these are no more significant than the single twinkle of a star. Perhaps, this is why we try to outshine the heavens with our cities and make theatrical events of our simple lives. — Christopher Hawke

It is part," Rollo writes home to the elder Dr. Groast in Lancashire, in elaborate revenge for childhood tales of Jenny Greenteeth waiting out in the fens to drown him, "part of an old and clandestine drama for which the human body serves only as a set of very allusive, often cryptic programme-notes- it's as if the body we can measure is a scrap of this programme found outside in the street, near a magnificent stone theatre we cannot enter. The convolutions of language denied us! the great Stage, even darker than Mr Tyrone Guthrie's accustomed murk ... Gilt and mirroring, red velvet, tier on tier of box seats all in shadows too, as somewhere down in that deep proscenium, deeper than geometries we know of, the voices utter secrets we are never told ... — Thomas Pynchon

An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.' — Theodore Bikel

It has been said that the myth is a public dream, dreams are private myths. Unfortunately we give our mythic side scant attention these days. As a result, a great deal escapes us and we no longer understand our own actions. So it remains important and salutary to speak not only of the rational and easily understood, but also of enigmatic things: the irrational and the ambiguous. To speak both privately and publicly. — Mary Zimmerman

I think the great thing about theatre, and if you start in theatre, is that it does build a confidence in poetic themes and ideas. — Abi Morgan

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. — Oscar Wilde

I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city. — Todd English

You can see some very great theatre actors who don't work at all well on screen. They're trying too hard at it. — Kevin Whately

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

There are great drifting theatre curtains in the sky, and they change color as she watches: green goes to purple, purple to vermilion, vermilion to a queer bloody shade of red she cannot name. Russet perhaps comes close, but that isn't it exactly. She thinks no one has ever named the shade she's seeing. — Stephen King

If any theme runs through all my work, it is what Adrienne Rich once called "re-vision", i.e., the re-perceiving of experience, not because our experience is complex or subtle or hard to understand (though it is sometimes all three) but because so much of what's presented to us as "the real world" or "the way it is" is so obviously untrue that a great deal of social energy must be mobilized to hide that gross and ghastly fact. has a theatre critic (whose name I'm afraid I've forgotten) once put it," There's less there than meets the eye". Hence, my love for science fiction, which analyses reality by changing it. — Joanna Russ

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. — Jason Robert Brown

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. (Address to Congress on Resigning Commission Dec 23, 1783) — George Washington

There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both. — Harry Lloyd

I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture. — Andy Serkis

I was used to theatre classes. I studied with my mother; she was a theatre teacher and directed, too, so it was very family-like. Then I studied with a great teacher in Paris, and she was wonderful; she pushed me, but she was a warm soul. — Juliette Binoche

People ask me if I ever feel outside the Hollywood loop, and I never do, because both of us do a lot of theatre, so it's great for New York and it's also half-way between Europe and the west coast, so it's the best of both worlds. — Liam Neeson

It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera. — Ian Fleming

To perform at the Cardiff Millennium Centre was amazing in itself - the theatre is an incredible venue and it was great to be performing so close to home. For me the best experience was in Glasgow, where I got to play Dee Dee for two weeks! The audience sang along to every song with such enthusiasm you actually couldn't hear yourself singing! That was incredible! — Francesca Jackson

I'm just attracted to good material and great characters and that can come in any form, whether it's television or film or a theatre piece. — Laurie Holden

When the death toll among British troops was added to that of the carriers the official 'butcher's bill' in the East Africa campaign exceeded 100,000 souls. The true figure was undoubtedly much higher: as many a British official admitted, 'the full tale of the mortality among [the] native carriers will never be told'.2 Even 100,000 deaths is a sobering enough figure. It is almost double the number of Australian or Canadian or Indian troops who gave their lives in the Great War; indeed it is equivalent to the combined casualties - the dead and wounded - sustained by Indian troops. It is as if the entire African workforce employed at the time in the mines of South Africa had been wiped out. Yet the East Africa campaign remains, by and large, a forgotten theatre of war. — Edward Paice

A man had said that to her once at the stage door. She'd been leaving after a theatre session, buzzing still with the high of performance, and he'd stopped her to say how much he'd enjoyed it. "You've a great talent for observation," he'd said. "Ears, eyes, and heart, all at once. — Kate Morton

I used to do a lot of serious theatre during my school and college days. Comedy was only reserved for youth festival and inter-college competitions. Then once 'The Great Indian Laughter Challenge' was launched, a regional channel in Punjab started a program based on that. I participated in it and emerged as the winner. — Kapil Sharma

But it would be broadcast, and in the great public theatre of his age; that unregulated market of braying narcissists, that Wild West of disinformation and fraud, that infinite sea of piracy, the great electorate where the constituency of billions voted their approval with a click of a mouse. The internet. It brought governments down and rewrote history ... — Adam Nevill

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. — Steve Buscemi

Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won the BBC Carlton Hobbs Award, so I did some BBC Radio drama work, which is a lovely way to start out because you work with lots of great people, and you're working all the time, so you're learning rather than sitting around and waitressing. — Lydia Leonard

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

11 All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it. — Blaise Pascal

Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small? — Langston Hughes

The great theatre for virtue is conscience. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that. — Brian Cox

When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man. — David Suchet

The theater is a great equalizer: it is the only place where the poor can look down on the rich. — Will Rogers

I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

Where every moment is about truth and I think it's a great challenge every night. That's what really drove me to wanting to do theatre, and it's great. — Deborah Cox

I'm interested in the spirits of people. In the theatre, there's the acting part of acting - and I'm not saying that can't be great - and there's the essence. To explore that essence, you need a key, a look, a gesture, an insight that unlocks the person's soul. — Ralph Fiennes

I love the instantaneous nature of filming rather than the repetition of working in the theatre, but that maybe because I haven't had great experiences working in the theatre. — Emilia Fox

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

I'm really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to theatre, and if that child has a great experience at a pantomime they will continue to come year after year. — John Barrowman

There's a great charm in theatre; I enjoyed doing it for twelve years and did lots of plays. At this chapter of my life, I am a cinema actor, and I would like to continue to be so, and at some point I would return to the theatre. — Boman Irani

Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme. — Emile Hirsch

The South Pacific was once the playground for ship-sick European sailors. Then it became the roistering barricade of the last great pirates. Next it was the longed-for escape from the canyons of New York. Then the unwilling theatre for an American military triumph. But now it has become the meeting ground for Asia and America. — James A. Michener

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name. — Patrick Macnee

Theatre is great, but we don't live in an idealistic world, and we have to pay our bills. — Randeep Hooda

The great lesson in theatre is that you live the story every night, and that is a wonderful vehicle for getting to the richest places in a performance or investing a character with the richest life. — Celia Weston

I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes. — J. C. Chandor