Quotes & Sayings About Live Theater

If there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like. — Fran Lebowitz

I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Doing theater, I call it concentrated shampoo. You put a dime in the palm of your hand and you get a headful of lather. When you do a play, you're there for two and a half hours, and you live a lifetime. — Richard Kind

I'm the most inappropriate dad. I curse in front of my kids and their friends. I let my kids watch R-rated movies. I'll walk by the movie theater and say, 'Let's go see that,' and my kids will say, 'No, it's rated R. It's not appropriate for kids.' I'm like Uncle Dad. We have fun. I don't live with them, but I drive over four days a week. — Marlon Wayans

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience. — Eli Wallach

America comes with both rights and responsibilities. You have, for example, the right to free speech, but you have the responsibility to not yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. If you don't live up to that responsibility, you face certain consequences. It's a simple but effective formula. Unfortunately, tenured professors are completely insulated from it. They can scream fire in their classrooms all they want - and then hide behind their tenure if anyone questions them on it. — Glenn Beck

The political world was anathema; its activists, both retro and progressive, seemed wrongheaded and dreamy. The revolutionaries, armed or peaceful, had no notion of what should happen after they "won." Who would rule? The "people"? Please. What did that mean? The best outcome would be to introduce a new idea into the population that perhaps a politician would act on. The rest was theater seeking an audience. Wealth alone explained humanity's evil, and he was determined to live without deference to it. — Toni Morrison

I want to be back on Broadway one day. That's a dream of mine. There's nothing like live theater, and I think it's so important for me to be able to be on stage with an audience that responds. — Naturi Naughton

Yes, yes, theater in general is just going to always be my first love, performing for a live audience. — Megan Hilty

I went to a theater arts school, so I'm interested in many different projects, whether it be film, television or even live theater. I'm a performer. That's what I do. That's what I want to do. — Derek Hough

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

I was probably singing before I could talk. Musical theater is my passion. If I could afford it, I would just do dinner theater and live a simple life. — Bethany Joy Lenz

Live theater to me is much more free than the movies or television. — Eartha Kitt

Pen-and-paper role-playing is live theater and computer games are television. People want the convenience and instant gratification of turning on the TV rather than getting dressed up and going out to see a live play. In the same way, the computer is a more immediately accessible way to play games. — Gary Gygax

Whether I'm directing live action or animation, my responsibility is the same. I have an audience sitting in a theater with their popcorn, and I've got to show them a good time and make them feel something. — Lee Unkrich

So I've done my fair share of theater. I have also been very fortunate in that I've been able to come to New York two or three times a year just to see as many shows as possible. I think the live theater culture here is incredible. — Neil Patrick Harris

The TV show I do ['Dr Quinn'] is the day job that enables me to work with this theater [Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble]. That's all I live for. That's what I care about. There's no dough in it. Nothing to do but lose money. But it's all from the heart, and that's why it's so much fun. — Orson Bean

When I was a little girl, the only real form of entertainment I was exposed to was theater, being raised in St. Louis, and I still love theater, and I think sitcoms are similar to that, in there's a live audience, and you know, I definitely like the comedy of it, too. I like to make people laugh, and I definitely think laughter is healing. — Kelly Stables

The theater itself is so archaic and old fashioned, that it doesn't really matter to me whether it's on Avenue D or at the Helen Hayes Theater. What's the difference? It's still a very nostalgic form. Also, it means you're knowingly walking into a room where there's actors. I feel it's very embarrassing. Because, you know, they're right there. You always think like, they can see you, and I think it's mortifying, frankly, and I hate to sit near the front, where you feel they actually might see you. It's too ... it's too live. — Fran Lebowitz

Unlike film and TV, theater is a luxury object, but one that ordinary middle-class people can still afford. Above all, it isn't a mass medium: Live theater is a small-scale, handmade art form. Intimacy is what makes it special. — Terry Teachout

When your dawn theater sounds to clear your sinuses: don't delay. Jump. Those voices may be gone before you hit the shower to align your wits. Speed is everything. The 90-mph dash to your machine is a sure cure for life rampant and death most real. Make haste to live. Oh, God, yes. Live. And write. With great haste. — Ray Bradbury

So sell the Hummer, buy a Dodge, and move into a trailer. (Wulf)
Oh, yeah, right. Remember when I traded the Hummer for an Alpha Romeo last year? You burned the car and bought me a new Hummer and threatened to lock me in my room with a hooker if I ever did it again. And as for the perks ... Have you bothered to look around this place? We have a heated indoor pool, a theater with surround sound, two cooks, three maids, and a pool guy I get to boss around, not to mention all kinds of other fun toys. I'm not about to leave Disneyland. It's the only good part in this arrangement. I mean, hell, if my life has to suck there's no way I'm going to live in the Mini-Winni. Which knowing you, you'd make me park out front anyway with armed guards standing watch in case I get a hangnail. (Chris) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I have a company in the U.K., a performance-capture studio. We're looking to push the boundaries of performance-capture technology in film and video games, but also in live theater, using real-time performance capture with actors onstage, and combining that with holographic imagery. — Andy Serkis

The adrenaline of a live performance is unlike anything in film or theater. I can see why it's so addictive. — Gwyneth Paltrow

I love live theater; I like the relationship between the show and the audience. That's my comfort zone, but more than anything, it's what makes me happy. — Kristin Chenoweth

The discipline of live theater - doing the same perfect thing night after night, eight times a week - never ceases to amaze me — Neil Patrick Harris

We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it. — Thornton Wilder

You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for 'The Lion King' a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that's what the theater is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture. — Stephen Sondheim

This sounds so bogus, but I would love to, at some point when my kids are in college, is just go do a whole season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and do a year of plays. Most actors miss the days of live theater. — Donal Logue

The wonderful thing about Food for Thought is that it lets you keep your hand in theater and be in front of a live audience without a commitment of six months, or even three months. — Treat Williams

I love the theater. I love being on stage; I love the live audience. I also love dressing up and all of the make-believe. — Nicole Ari Parker

What he had loved in Marthe were those evenings when they would walk into the movie theater and men's eyes turned toward her, that moment when he offered her to the world. What he loved in her was his power and his ambition to live. Even his desire, the deepest craving of his flesh, probably derived from this initial astonishment at possessing a lovely body, at mastering and humiliating it. — Albert Camus

Without rich people who want it done now, who would animate the free world? In theory, you want everyone to live peacefully according to their needs, along the banks of a river. In fact, you worry that you'd die of boredom there. In fact, you get a buzz from someone like Carole Potter, who keeps prize chickens and could teach a graduate course in landscaping; who maintains a staff of four (more in the summers, during High Guest Season); a handsome, slightly ridiculous husband; a beautiful daughter at Harvard and an incorrigible son doing something or other on Bondi Beach; Carole who is charming and self-deprecating and capable, if pushed, of a hostile indifference crueler than any form of rage; who reads novels and goes to movies and theater and yes, yes, bless her, buys art, serious art, about which she actually fucking knows a thing or two. — Michael Cunningham

When I'm in the process of making a movie I'm not thinking about the finished result, and whether people have to see it once or more than once, and what the reaction to it will be. I just make it, and then I live with the consequences, some of which may not be as pleasant as I'd like! I know one thing, however. Many viewers may come out of the theater not satisfied, but they won't be able to forget the movie. I know they'll be talking about it during their next dinner. I want them to be a little restless about my movies, and keep trying to find something in them. — Abbas Kiarostami

But my point, Mattie - if I have a point, Mattie - is this: kind of try to live up to the best that's in you. If you give your word to people, let them know that they're getting the word of the best. If you room with some dopey girl at college, try to make her less dopey. If you're standing outside a theater and some old gal comes up selling gum, give her a buck if you've got a buck - but only if you can do it without patronizing her. That's the trick, baby.' -Last Day of the Last Furlough — J.D. Salinger

In the middle 1940s ... I heard everyone live. Painting, the theater; everything was happening. It was an exciting time when New York was the place to be. — Bill Dixon

I still find new things every night, which is the beauty and fun of live theater. It's a living, breathing art form. — Brandon Uranowitz

For my part, I like live theater best when it's taut, concentrated and intimate. — Terry Teachout

There's nothing like the buzz of live theater. You put it out there and receive an instant reaction: laughing, crying, yelling, applauding. — Samantha Barks

Having that college-town atmosphere with a live repertory company available was a real gift. I found myself gravitating toward the theater from about the age of nine. I guess it was the environment that got me started. — Christopher Reeve

If you love acting and you've ever experienced theater, then you know that in a movie it's almost impossible to live out that experience, unless you're a Pacino or a De Niro or somebody who gets to pick their parts. — Scott Caan

I did a number of local children's theater plays growing up, but in 5th grade, I had some good times on stage making people laugh as a troll in 'The Hobbit.' That solidified my dream to be on 'Saturday Night Live,' which was hugely influential for me growing up. — Lauren Lapkus

The great thing about the stage is that you have a structured month-long rehearsal period where you're going in every day. You have to have lots of run-throughs with theater because there are no second takes in front of a live audience. — Sanaa Lathan

The theater's a live thing, and film is, to some extent, a discipline where you're putting everything together and trying to execute something exactly. You do it away from people and then you present it at the end. — Clive Owen

Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression
a kind of rudimentary theater
as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means. — John Barth

I've studied theater since high school. Of course, it's a different story altogether being on Broadway, but it's still theater, and you have to be in front of a live audience, and that's very exciting. It's something I've definitely wanted to do, but I got involved in movies and television, and then it became a luxury to get back on the stage. — Dennis Haysbert

I don't want to play a laptop live if I'm just going to sit there, so it's also a problem of working at my movie theater job long enough to get money to get better equipment. — Kyle Parker

Nothing against comedy clubs, they work. But when you're sitting with a tablecloth and a candle and an appetizer menu, three-drink minimum, it can feel more like a dinner theater than a live experience. — Doug Stanhope

It's important that a film is loud and I hope many people agree. You should be inside of a film when you go into a theater. It should surround you, envelope you, so you can live inside a dream. — David Lynch

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world. — Gore Vidal

I love flexing theater muscles. Television has merits as well, but there's no substitute for live theater. — Eddie Cahill

Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you
if you don't mind my saying so? — Luigi Pirandello

You want people to think. You want people to be emotionally moved. And there's a theory behind that in terms of storytelling. It has been around for thousands of years. And that's where something like live theater or a live performance is something that is very valuable because you get instant feedback from your audience and you kind of know the things that work and the things that don't work. — George Lucas

For me, I can't live without acting or drama and writing - I also run a theater company. — Tom Cullen

I think one of the great bits of The Muppet show is that it was set in a 19th century British theater and they live so nicely amongst that lovely old theater. — James Bobin

Literature is the best way to overcome death. My father, as I said, is an actor. He's the happiest man on earth when he's performing, but when the show is over, he's sad and troubled. I wish he could live in the eternal present, because in the theater everything remains in memories and photographs. Literature, on the other hand, allows you to live in the present and to remain in the pantheon of the future.
Literature is a way to say, I was here, this is what I thought, this is what I perceived. This is my signature, this is my name. — Ilan Stavans

The universe is not for man alone, but is a theater of evolution for all living beings. Live and let live is its guiding principle. 'Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah' - Non-injury is the highest religion. — Virchand Gandhi

There's just something about getting up, putting it out there, and getting this exchange of energy. Whether your audience is a camera lens, or live theater, or whatever it is, just putting that out there and getting it back is just an honor. — Lauren Bowles

I really wanted to go back to the theater, the live theater. That was the thing I had never had a chance to do, even though I had trained to be a stage actress. — Angela Lansbury

Playing in front of an audience was just such a turn-on for me, and you have 200 people in the audience and it's like doing live theater. And filming something that goes to millions of people several weeks later, it's an interesting dynamic. — Jenna Elfman

Unlike film, live theater is an anti-naturalistic medium in which character is mainly illuminated through speech and movement. — Terry Teachout

We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the begging from the shape of later events. — Diane Setterfield

We're going to be married and hardly touch each other and have to work and work and never have any fun and we're just going to be okay with it because that's how life is and that's how relationships go, but I don't want that. I want our marriage to be ... fun. I love joking around while we fool around. I want to hold hands everywhere we go. I want to make out in the back of a movie theater, steal kisses in coffee shops, have sex over every inch of our apartment or house or wherever we live. And I'm scared marriage will change the fun part of our relationship. The part that keeps us young, keeps us in love, and I'm terrified you'll wake up when you're fifty and realize you're stuck with the decision you made when you were twenty-seven, and we haven't touched in months, we don't go out. I just want to know when that happens ... that you'll still ... you'll still love me. — Cassie Mae

I live in New York City, where, if you're in a movie at a popular independent theater, you think you're king of the world, because you're in a bubble. So there's no way for me to properly conceive of the attention that the movie gets in a way that doesn't make me confused. — Jesse Eisenberg

We're trying to get as many people to become interested in seeing it, but if you like the theater and you're interested in seeing what live theater looks like in New York, you probably already set your DVR. It's gonna be a hard ask to get a bunch of college-basketball fans to tune in for three hours to watch the Tonys. — Neil Patrick Harris

The cast, staff, and crew of a live theater work together toward a common goal: a good performance. Thus, theater is necessarily a group effort. However, it is never a group effort of vague fellow committee members, but of associated autocrats-a playwright, a producer, a director, a stage manager, designers, and, above all, actors. Each accommodates the others, and may overlap others in function when necessary. But each autocrat assumes distinct responsibilities and accepts them completely. — Laurence Sterne

My preference is live performance. Because you get the feedback. There's an energy. It's live theater. That's why I think actors like that. You know, musicians need it, comedians definitely need it. It doesn't matter what size and what club, whether it's 30 people in the club or 2,000 in a hall or a theater. It's live, it's symbiotic, you need it. — Robin Williams

Well, I'm half Australian, half English and I live in London. That is the only reason I came upon this story. My Australian mother, Meredith Hooper, was invited in late 2007 by some Australian friends to make up a token Australian audience in a tiny fringe theater play reading of an unproduced, unrehearsed play called 'The King's Speech.' — Tom Hooper

'Scandal' has been, for me, the most consistent time I've ever logged in front of a camera. I grew up in the theater, and I feel very confident and comfortable on the stage and in front of a live audience, but the camera is a very different medium. — Katie Lowes

I really enjoy theater. Performing live onstage is helping me to grow as an actress. — Kim Fields

If I had the money, I would love to open up a movie theater that just played images and colors and beautiful music. For me, there's nothing like listening to a beautiful opera sometimes - on a record or seeing it live - just to be sleepy and let those beautiful voices take me somewhere I've never been before. — Peter Stormare

Theater in Chicago will always be my first love. It started careers for me and about 50 of my friends. We all love coming back. As soon as the TV show is over, I'll be back in Chicago, doing live theater. — William Petersen

If I had to pick one form of acting, it would be live theater. That's where I started; that's where I became a man, I think I'm still finishing up that job. — Nick Offerman

I still get excited performing live. when you see the immediate reaction from a crowd, its like being a theater performer, its something you can't get from being a writer or being an ad man ... its almost ritualistic. — Marilyn Manson

We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd ... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste? ... Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding? — Norman Mailer

I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds. — Stephen Sondheim

It's all sort of dreams and it's all illusion. It's theater; it's not real. We're making up stories, you know, and people tend to run into you and believe you are your characters. And I suppose the funny thing is the longer you go, you do become sort of some version of [your characters]. You both diverge from them - you know - you live, but you also permanently inhabit that geography and that mental space - and so you do morph a little bit. We do become what we imagine. — Bruce Springsteen

We film in front of a live audience, and I was a theater actor before I got into television, so I like that. — Jillian Bach

What if Theater was the Pong of the the digital Ping?
A place where the live experience has an function? — Natasha Tsakos

We didn't have a lot of live theater in Oklahoma. I didn't visit New York when I was growing up. I watched movie musicals, and I believed in an idealistic, idyllic version of Broadway. — Kelli O'Hara

As a student studying acting, I was always broke, so going to see any live theater was almost impossible. — Jesse L. Martin

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way. — Lady Gaga

I used to be a bit obsessed by acting but not anymore. I do enjoy acting but I probably enjoy it more now because it's easier. I can't work in the theater because to me it's too serious. It's like being in prison for me. I admire people that can do that but I can't do it. I'd rather live my life and do a bit of acting in between. — Anthony Hopkins

A man's voice was saying, "Odette seems a little off tonight."
"You think?" answered a woman.
"Less confident than last night's," said the man. "I wonder if she's injured." A loud put-upon sigh. "Not to mention that the swans sound more like a herd of elephants."
Oh, come on, Grigori wanted to say: You spoiled, spoiled people. The dancer was wonderful, just like the swan-girls, doing their best to deliver them magnificence. If she was "slightly off", it was nothing Grigori had been able to notice. These people - himself included - were all so thoroughly indulged, could they not simply accept the wonder of it, sitting in this lush, gilded theater while a live orchestra accompanied so much physical exquisiteness? And this man thought he had the right to be disappointed! That these people expected so much, that they could expect that much, and not be ashamed of their petty disappointments. — Daphne Kalotay

From the time that I was in high school, my life really revolved around live theater, so it almost feels genetic. — Philip Baker Hall

My show in Egypt was called, 'The Show,' or, 'Al Bernameg' in Arabic. Basically, it was a political satire show. It started on Internet by three, four-minute episodes, and then it evolved into a live show in a theater, which was something that was unprecedented in the Arab world. — Bassem Youssef

On television, you have an intimate moment with the camera. In theater, you are making something live with people there. My brain doesn't understand that you don't get another take ever. I'm finally learning on TV that you can do something over if you make a mistake. — Kirsten Vangsness

I think of my father and how confused he was by me. He understood my love for theater, and he understood that New York City was the only place that it was happening in America, really, in any live way. — Spalding Gray

Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom. — Camille Paglia

The liveness of theater, and the excitement of experiencing it alongside an audience, is something you can't get at home. That makes the theater more vital than ever. It's definitely expensive, but I have faith that the market will keep recognizing the live experience as a valuable and important one. — Nick Blaemire

The home of Rugby Union is in Twickenham - just outside London in the suburbs, where I live. I'm mad for it. The trouble with being an actor and being in the theater is that you always miss the games. — Alexander Hanson

Immediate gratification of a live audience makes me come alive. I miss performing in theater. I'll make my return to the stage eventually. — Brendan Dooling

The energy of live theater is indescribable. You are just in the moment for an hour and a half. — Adrianne Palicki

All the difference in the world between the movies and the thrill I get out of a play at the theater. Ay, yes! Like fooling around with paper dolls when you could be playing with a real live baby. — Edna Ferber

I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the ghosts of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare, but what it is to be a playwright, to be interacting with human beings in the live theater and affect people on such a direct, emotional level. — John Logan

When I lived in Los Angeles, I used to live in the Hollywood Hills, behind Grauman's Theater, and I'd always hit the matinees. — J. D. Souther

I want to do stage again, because there just aren't words for how great it is. People say that all the time, 'There's nothing like live theater, blah blah,' but it's really true. I see a show and I know how they feel, and it feels great. — Anna Kendrick

If you want to be a theater actor, where do you live now? Young actors struggle on a Broadway salary. A lot of them live in shoe boxes; some of them are literally three to a shoebox. New York has gotten prohibitively expensive. — Stephen Spinella

Performing in a live theater is absolutely unbeatable. It is something I have done my entire life and have a gift, it seems, for sharing thoughts live. — Val Kilmer