Political Theatre Quotes & Sayings

Education and research is national, not E.U., business. — Tim Hunt

If a person just takes what is socio-political and geographical from the themes of my films then that's not enough. But if the person goes out of the theatre and, for example, makes the dinner he's eating later on, extra nice then I feel that I have succeeded. We have this urge to anaesthetize the moment we're living in. — Elia Suleiman

The first rule of good theatre is 'Show, don't tell.' It applies to good political action as well. — Carne Ross

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

Do young people have the moral stamina to carry through in case of economic depression? ... The real tests of the [younger] generations have not yet come, but they are on their way! — Billy Graham

When I was very young, I thought the theatre was a place where higher beings went about their celestial business, as if they knew nothing of ordinary life and its political mysteries. — Andrew O'Hagan

Music is the 'pure' art par excellence. It says nothing and has nothing to say. Never really having an expressive function, it is opposed to drama, which even in its most refined forms still bears a social message and can only be 'put over' on the basis of an immediate and profound affinity with the values and expectations of its audience. The theatre divides its public and divides itself. The Parisian opposition between right-bank and left-bank theatr, bourgeois theatre and avant-garde theatre, is inextricably aesthetic and political. — Pierre Bourdieu

The public execution did not re-establish justice; it reactivated power. In the seventeenth century, and even in the early eighteenth century, it was not, therefore, with all its theatre of terror, a lingering hang-over from an earlier age. Its ruthlessness, its spectacle, its physical violence, its unbalanced play of forces, its meticulous ceremonial, its entire apparatus were inscribed in the political functioning of the penal system. — Michel Foucault

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre. — Pete Townshend

We are all capable of loving. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I dislike weeping", I muttered.
"God gave us a variety of ways to get hurt out and do it clean. Blood cleans a wound, tears clean a different kind of wound... — Kristen Ashley

I dislike organized games, swimming pools, fashionable resorts, night clubs, music in restaurants, and political manifestoes; I enjoy driving from coast to coast, good food and drink, a few friends, dogs, the theatre, long walks, music and free conversation. — James Hilton

I came to Mozambique in 1986, when I first became involved with Teatro Avenida - a theatre company that stages plays concerned with political and social issues. — Henning Mankell

It's shameful that today's mouthy political expositors aren't better versed in Orwell. Can you imagine a theatre director who hasn't studied Shakespeare? — William Giraldi

Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world. — John Lahr

Pretty much at the age of 16, I realized acting wasn't going to be the vocation for me ... too political not enough creative control. But I loved the craft and my father wanted me to get a college degree. Seemed natural to study what I loved and Marymount Manhattan has a wonderful theatre program, I highly recommend it! A lot of what I learned there I apply to my comicbook writing and pacing. — Holly Golightly

The only thing her mother knew how to do was take. Take interest, take advantage, then take the nearest exit. Too bad she never learned to take responsibility. — Victorine E. Lieske

I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime. — Ismail Kadare

There's a tradition in British intellectual life of mocking any non-political force that gets involved in politics, especially within the sphere of the arts and the theatre. — Harold Pinter

People do get hypnotized by the hard choices. And stop looking for alternatives. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Most people would identify with the fact that we tend to be defined by the struggles we came through than by the successes. And certainly for me that's true. — Wendy Davis

Anyone who has lived here for long enough has seen it all before: opposing sides of the political spectrum ferociously criticising each other, getting hot under the collar about this and that, bringing up all sorts of allegations and innuendos. Then just as it looks as if the argument is about to get physical, harmony breaks out. A dialogue is opened, an accord or a compromise is found. And suddenly, just as quickly as it came, all that fiery rhetoric subsides and everyone realizes it was all synthetic, put on for show when all along some deal was imminent anyway. It's as if every politician is merely an actor in a little theatre, and as soon as the curtain falls and the public can't see them any more they all slap each other on the back, tot up the takings and go out for an expensive meal. — Tobias Jones

Poetry and code - and mathematics - make us read differently from other forms of writing. Written poetry makes the silent reader read three kinds of pattern at once; code moves the reader from a static to an active, interactive and looped domain; while algebraic topology allows us to read qualitative forms and their transformations. — Stephanie Strickland

Go sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up."
(Melvin Udall aka Jack Nicholson, 1997) — Jack Nicholson

Politics had never been central to the Christian religious experience. Jesus had, after all, said that his Kingdom was not of this world. For centuries, the Jews of Europe had refrained from political involvement as a matter of principle. But politics was no secondary issue for Muslims. We have seen that it had been the theatre of their religious quest. Salvation did not mean redemption from sin, but the creation of a just society in which the individual could more easily make that existential surrender of his or her whole being that would bring fulfilment. The polity was therefore a matter of supreme importance, — Karen Armstrong

I don't think it's the job of theatre at the moment to provide political propaganda; that would be simplistic. We have to explore our situation further before we will understand it. — Edward Bond

Someone should keep reminding Mr. Average Man that he was born free, divine, strong; uncrushable by fate, society, or hell itself; and that he is a child of God, equal heir to all the bounties of God; and that goodness is riches, kindness is power, and freedom is glory. Above all, every man is born with an inner capacity to take him as far as his imagination can dream or envision-providing he is free to dream and envision. — Frank Capra

It is very good, Wisehammer, it's very well written, but it's too-too-political. It will be considered provocative."
"You don't want me to say it."
"Not tonight. We have many people against us."
"I could tone it down. I could omit 'We left our country for our country's good.'"
"That's the best line. — Timberlake Wertenbaker

Stirner's political praxis is quixotic. It accepts the established hierarchies of constraint as given ... Not liable to any radical change, they constitute part of the theatre housing the individual's action ... The egoist uses the elements of the social structure as props in his self-expressive act. — John Carroll

The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda. — Noel Coward

Music made me kinder. Music made me a lover. — Debasish Mridha