Quotes & Sayings About Live Theatre

If you live a long life and get to the end of it without ever once having felt crushingly depressed, then you probably haven't been paying attention. — Duncan MacMillan

I think a person has to believe in something,
or search out some kind of faith;
otherwise life is empty, nothing.
How can you live not knowing why the cranes fly,
why children are born, why there are stars in the sky ...
Either you know why you live,
or it's all small, unnecessary bits. — Sarah Ruhl

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor. — Anupam Kher

I had saved a lot of money working at Mrs. Fields' Chocolate Chip Cookies, ushering at the Golden Gate Theatre, and doing odd jobs so I could live in New York for a few months. If it ran out, I would have to give up and go home. It turned out OK. I got my Equity card and started working. — B. D. Wong

I've done movies with Oliver Stone and Michael Mann. And I've done quite a few dramas in my time, from the theatre to film work. I just think the audience is used to seeing me on 'Saturday Night Live,' and 'K-9,' and 'Curly Sue' and of course, 'According to Jim.' I think that my comedies have been the most popular. — James Belushi

I'm very lucky to be on 'Melissa and Joey' because it's a multi-cam sitcom, and it was a nice transition from theatre because it's taped in front of a live audience. — Nick Robinson

A video taped stage performance is just - you know, it's never gonna be the same as it is if you're sitting there live in the theatre. — Nathan Lane

I want to seduce the audience. If they can go along for a ride they wouldn't ordinarily take, or don't even know they're taking, then they might see highly charged political issues in a new and unexpected way ... The theatre is now so afraid to face its social demons that we've given that responsibility over to film. But it will always be harder to deal with certain issues in the theatre. The live event - being watched by people as we watch - makes it seem all the more dangerous. — Paula Vogel

I try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl, I try to learn to live dead, just numb, but then I see someone I want, and it's like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest, and I know I'm losing. — Tony Kushner

How to you teach someone that a theatre comes about first as an idea, from an individual who has a philosophy and a passion? That a theatre's idea is its heart and individual soul? That the person who creates it must have the desire not only to create work, but also to create the conditions in which that work can live-and in which others can do it as well? How do you teach someone to want to be a midwife as well as a mother. — Robert Kalfin

They must go out of the theatre with the strength they live by strengthened from looking upon some passion that could, whatever its chosen way of life, strike down an enemy, fill a long stocking with money or move a girl's heart. — W.B.Yeats

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film - you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up. — Daniel Day-Lewis

I combined theatre and films with live TV, such as 'The Royal Variety Show,' performing sketches opposite Bob Hope and Maurice Chevalier. — Shirley Eaton

Oh, where is it, where did my past go, when I was young, happy and intelligent, when my dreams and thoughts had some grace, and the present and future were lit up with hope? Why is it, that when we've just started to live, we grow dull, gray, uninteresting, lazy, useless, with flattened-out souls? — Sarah Ruhl

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

I'm a very private person, so I didn't like this idea of tweeting about me. And then I realized, 'Oh, this is actually a brilliant device in terms of interacting with the fans'. It's a lovely way to just get back, to thank the fans for watching the show. And to live tweet is kind of like getting the rewards of doing live theatre. — Darby Stanchfield

Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting. — Dan Stevens

I love the theatre. It's a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It's a nice way to live your life. — Alfred Molina

You can't remember what movie you saw two weeks ago, but you can remember what Broadway show you saw two weeks ago and where you ate dinner - everything about it. There's something about live theatre that hits you in the heart. — Susan Stroman

The health of a nation, a society, can be determined by the art it demands. We have insisted of television and our movies that they not have anything to do with anything, that they be our never-never land; and if we demand this same function of our live theatre, what will be left of the visual-auditory arts - save the dance (in which nobody talks) and music (to which nobody listens)? — Edward Albee

The world has never before had as much drama as today. Radio, films, television and video inundate us with drama. But while these forms can engage or even enrage the audience, in none of them can the viewer's response alter the artistic event itselfThat is why theatre is signing its own death warrant when it tries to play too safe. On the other hand, that is also the reason why, although its future often seems bleak, theatre will continue to live and to provoke. — Girish Karnad

I'm never in Hollywood! I'm a theatre actor that lives in New York. I'm very seldom in Los Angeles. I don't dislike LA, I just don't think it's a very healthy place for me to be all the time. When I'm shooting a movie there and am working I'm perfectly happy. But when I'm not working or engaged in something it's a place that I wouldn't live. — Willem Dafoe

I'd love to do more TV, but I'd love to get into more feature films. I'd also love to go back to the stage when the time and opportunity is right. I haven't gotten to do a lot of that here in L.A., but my favorite thing to do is live theatre. I'd love to actually have a career where you can kind of move in and out of all of those mediums. — Mariana Klaveno

Having done film, TV and theatre, the nicest final bit of the jigsaw is to do live comedy, because you can talk to the audience. It feels really natural to be able to laugh with them, but at the same time still be within the framework of a play. — Jessie Cave

I love going to the movie theatre, seeing live comedy, and going to amusement parks. — Jennette McCurdy

The Director's Role: You are the obstetrician. You are not the parent of this child we call the play. You are present at its birth for clinical reasons, like a doctor or midwife. Your job most of the time is simply to do no harm.
When something does go wrong, however, your awareness that something is awry
and your clinical intervention to correct it
can determine whether the child will thrive or suffer, live or die. — Frank Hauser

I think theatres will always remain a sacred place where people go for something live and experience things live, which is very different than the experience of film. — Susan Stroman

I took part in a theatre festival in Massachusetts two summers after I graduated from college. Then I was in Los Angeles thinking: "I'm going to go to New York." I'd decided that I would not have a chance of a film career, so I was about to make the move. I bought a plane ticket and found a place to live in New York, packed my bags and of course the universe "told me" that I was not meant to go. Suddenly, a week before I was supposed to leave, I had three job offers and one of them was my first movie. — Chris Pine

Doing 'EastEnders' wasn't exactly suffering, but my soul's not in quick-fix TV. Theatre doesn't pay like TV work pays, though. We all have to live, don't we? — Phil Daniels

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

Aurelius says that one reason it doesn't matter how long you live is that this is not theatre, that the whole is not the thing. Each moment is the thing. The soul obtains its own end, wherever the limit of life may be fixed. Not as ... in a play ... where the whole action is incomplete if anything cuts it short; but in every part and wherever it be stopped, it makes what has been set before it full and complete, so that it can say, 'I have what is my own. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Live theatre provides a rush you can't get in film or television. But it is the TV and film work that offers the leisure to go off and do a play. — Raymond Cruz

Originally what I used to love was being on a stage and reacting to a live audience and maybe my calling is more in theatre. — Emma Watson

I think I'm a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn't want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time. — Penelope Keith

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

Theatre is live content, and you can tell if you have worked your audience. — Om Puri

It's quite rare for a group of people to come together for a live event that isn't loud music. A live event that enables thinking to take place, to take place collectively. It's unique to theatre. It's a quality I never want to see diminished. — Tim Crouch

I always thought that it was every performer's dream. That's the epitome of being an artist, being able to express song, dance and acting in a live theatre setting and really connecting with an audience on that level. — Deborah Cox

I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality. — Sandra Brown

We live like latecomers at the theatre; we must catch up as best we can, dividing the beginning from the shape of later events. — Diane Setterfield

Looking back, I got the bed I wanted and I lay in it. I didn't want to go to America. If you want to join that world, you have to go and live there, and that was something I could not have done. I am very much about family. It doesn't matter where I live, but I feel very needful of my people around me. Besides, theatre is my first love. — Felicity Kendal

I've been acting my whole life. I have this huge imagination! I'm a dancer and my mom's a dance teacher, and I was always performing and entertaining people. I'd go to see live theatre or a movie, and I'd become the main character for a few days afterwards. I loved being somebody new for a temporary amount of time. — Natasha Calis

The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood lawn cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the now dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theatres and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe. — Robert Montgomery

The dogged effort to "denaturalize" gender in this text emerges, I think, from a strong desire both to counter the normative violence implied by ideal morphologies of sex and to uproot the pervasive assumptions about natural or presumptive heterosexuality that are informed by ordinary and academic discourses on sexuality. The writing of this denaturalization was not done simply out of a desire to play with language or prescribe theatrical antics in the place of "real" politics, as some critics have conjectured (as if theatre and politics are always distinct). It was done from a desire to live, to make life possible, and to rethink the possible as such. — Judith Butler

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

I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores. — Charles Bukowski

Records are only one-dimensional. Even film is only one-dimensional. That's why music and live theatre is so important, because it's not the same thing. A recording is just a record of part of the experience, but it's not the whole experience. — Steve Earle

I've always been a huge fan of theatre and performance. The idea of just the human voice and just this night. Live music is the same. They're doing it for you right now. It's an amazing thing. And if you perform a story properly, it can be a transporting, too. — T.C. Boyle

I love the rehearsal process in the theatre, and the visceral sense of contact and communication with a live audience. — Judd Nelson

I live in Los Angeles where there is not that much in the way of theatre, so the La Jolla Playhouse is pretty much the only place that is on my radar, and when they have something going on, and I am available, I will certainly go in. — Jimmi Simpson

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

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

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

Because I like theatre and I love a challenge. With 'ZEBRA!' I've found a new Australian play where I can create a character first - that's what I live to do. — Bryan Brown

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists. — Stephen Sondheim

Minus the adverts of TV, the special effects of movies, and the trash of the Internet, live theatre is a personal means to connect with viewers. Lining up eye candy, using graphic words, and teasing or enacting bedroom antics is a lowbrow way to go about it. — Tom Jalio

The only way that you can keep moving forward, finding other ways of expressing things about this increasingly complicated world that we live in, is by listening and observing not only to life around you but to the other people who are in the room. It's not about a sort of, you know, a sense that you have to be democratic about these things, it's a question of creativity that the process of making theatre is a collaborative process, and it is not in, it is not a question of, you know, I have no interest in paying lip service to it, for me it's absolutely fundamental. — Simon McBurney

I remember seeing 'Hairspray' when I was 15, and it is such a luxury to be able to see a Broadway show, and it is so hard to do if you don't live in New York - plus, it can be expensive to go to the theatre all the time, too. — Nikki Blonsky

To move from a discussion of the early relationship between theatre and television to an examination of the current situation of live performance is to confront the irony that whereas television initially sought to replicate and, implicitly, to replace live theatre, live performance itself has developed since that time toward the replication of the discourse of mediatization. — Philip Auslander

The triumphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age; but those of a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, when the victorious chieftain shall be forgotten, or shall live only in the song of the minstrel and the page of the chronicler. — William H. Prescott

Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene. — Tom Riley

When I stand on stage, I get nervous, and because unexpected situations can occur, we need even more preparation. I must have confidence on top of that as well. The reason why I chose drama/theatre as my major is to act after learning all the theory first. You only live once, and I can only live as myself. I think I could learn a lot of things if I can live as others through acting. — Seohyun

I feel like the rap metal at the end of the 1990s destroyed rock music for everybody and suddenly everybody felt like they had to apologise for being in rock bands. People suddenly felt bad about wanting to reach massive audiences and the sense of theatre, that we have in our live show, became something to avoid. — Nate Ruess

I love musical theatre because I love doing a live performance eight times a week. — Gareth Gates

I enjoy theatre tremendously, and there's nothing like a live performance. — Melanie Rawn

Playing live is closer to theatre, although when you're up there on your own, it's quite scary and revealing because you're playing your own songs. It's like a one man show that you've written yourself. — Iwan Rheon

Scarborough never really began to live until the summer of 1964 when the Beatles played the Futurist Theatre, and no one in the audience, least of all me, heard anything but the screaming. — David Hewson

Whether you are a writer or an actor or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else. — Lee Hall