Quotes & Sayings About Rehearsal

You discover a lot of things on your feet and if you don't have any rehearsal, then anything that happens on the screen is by accident. — Paul Newman

When you're working on a film, it's not theater; you don't have a few weeks of rehearsal. A lot of times you are showing up on set, and you've never been to the place; you've never met the other actors you're working with. — Ben Schnetzer

Nobody could dissapear to their trailer once it was up and running, you were all there on the same stage. It was 10 days of rehearsal and 10 days of shooting, which was very tiring. — Julian Sands

If Broadway shows charge preview prices while the cast is in dress rehearsal, why should restaurants charge full price when their dining room and kitchen staffs are still practicing? — Marian Burros

I wake up every morning thinking ... this is my last day. And I jam everything into it. There's no time for mediocrity. This is no damned dress rehearsal. — Anita Roddick

Keeping the commandments is not a burden, but a joyous rehearsal for the eternity. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. What I learned from it is that today seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. — Anna Quindlen

No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience, the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved. — Mark Gibbs

Subconsciously we are lured by the expectation that we will reach a stage where we don't have to fix anything ever again. One day we will reach "happily ever after." We are convinced of the notion of "resolution." It's as if everything that we've experienced up until now, our whole lives to this moment, was a dress rehearsal. We believe our grand performance is yet to come, so we do not live for today. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

The best thing I ever heard was in the '60s. I heard Jimi Hendrix play 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' after a rehearsal, and it was brilliant. — Roy Wood

Plays are a pretty big commitment. It takes a minimum of three months out of your life, really. And if you have family or kids, then at least during the rehearsal period for five or six weeks, you kind of say goodbye to everybody. — Philip Baker Hall

I like to do everything you can possibly do before you go into rehearsal, because once we are in rehearsal or on the stage there will be a problem I didn't anticipate. It's really good to think we got it all nailed - of course you've never got it all nailed. — Harold Prince

Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they'll let it loose and you go, 'Ah that's great.' — Denis Leary

George Harrison: The day after the Blue Angel audition, John showed up to rehearsal with a long list of name suggestions, and I remember each and every one of them: the Deads-men, the Deadmen, the Undeads-men, the Undeadmen, the Rots, the Rotters, the Dirts, the Dirty Ones, the Grayboys, the Eaten Brains, the Eating Brains, the Mersey Beaters, the Mersey Beaten, the Bloodless, the Graves, the Headstones, and the Liverpools of Blood. Paul ripped off John's right arm and used it to slap John across the face, then he said, Those're horrible, mate, just horrible, y'know. — Alan Goldsher

For the first time I go to La Scala, for each thing, for each rehearsal, my knees were shaking. But the audience was very fine with me. — Ildar Abdrazakov

Any rehearsal process - I find, anyway - does have quite an effect on me, and I very much live in that world for the whole period of time that I'm involved with the production. But normally, afterwards with a little bit of space, I can come right back out of it again. — Laura Donnelly

I'm happy whenever I'm in a rehearsal room. I've always gotten all my energy and creativity in there. — Laurie Metcalf

Live more than your neighbor. Unleash yourself upon the world and go places. Go now. Giggle, no, laugh. And bark at the moon like the wild dog that you are. Understand that this in not a dress rehearsal. This is it. Your life. Face your fears and live your dreams. Take it all in. Yes, every chance you get. Come close. And by all means, whatever you do, get it on film. — Jon Blais

I always stay out of the rehearsal room you know when they first come in. Then once they had chance to play a little bit, then I walk in. Because I've seen guys fall apart. — Ray Charles

When you perform in front of an audience after only two days of rehearsal, you're flying by the seat of your pants - particularly when they're rewriting the show right up to the moment the camera goes on. — Michael Richards

My stomach lurched; it was the day of the rehearsal. It was the day I'd see not just my friends and family who, I was certain, would love me no matter what grotesque skin condition I'd contracted since the last time we saw one another, but also many, many people I'd never met before--ranching neighbors, cousins, business associates, and college friends of Marlboro Man's. I wasn't thrilled at the possibility that their first impression of me might be something that involved scales. — Ree Drummond

Memory is a rehearsal for a show that never goes on. — Jonathan Lethem

We don't just show up on stage; we bring along the oil of praise in jars of practice and rehearsal so that when the Lord shows up, our worship shines as the light with which His Church shall welcome Him! — Gangai Victor

I had a lot of fun writing things that died during dress rehearsal. Sometimes I remember the crazy ones that died even more fondly than the ones that did really well. — John Mulaney

From the day I met her at the wedding rehearsal, I couldn't stop thinking of her beautiful face. I was forever drawing her, sketching her, and even tattooing her. How many people in Ellsberg were walking around with tattoos of Lark's face? Whenever a client didn't bring a specific image in and a woman's face was involved, I used Lark's. Hell, I hadn't even noticed this fact until two happy clients showed off their tattoos and I realized the pinup girl and fairy princess had the same face. — Bijou Hunter

Our spiritual immutarity never shows up more than in our lack of praying, be it alone or in a church prayer meeting. Let 20% of the chior members fail to turn up for rehearsal and the chior master is offended. Let 20% of the church members turn up for a prayer meeting, and the pastor is elated. — Leonard Ravenhill

There's nowhere to hide in the theatre. You can't be the one in rehearsal who doesn't know their lines. — Keeley Hawes

You know the first time I sat in the chair I felt anything but up, it was very emotional for me. I had a chair in my hotel room, a chair at rehearsal, and I was trying to spend as much time as I could in the chair. — Gregory Hines

When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives. — Laura Donnelly

I don't believe in sort of holding back, you know, life isn't a dress rehearsal! — Kate Winslet

When you're in a rehearsal room, it's like getting into a car and going on a long journey with everyone's stuff in the back. If you keep stopping the car and going, 'Are you sure we want to go?' and think, 'This is really daunting,' you will get frightened, so you just have to keep ploughing through it. — Kate Fleetwood

No question that 'Birdman' is a breathtaking technical achievement, not a stunt. Shot in 30 days after a long rehearsal period, with the actors' and the camera's movements calibrated to the inch and the millisecond so the action flows smoothly, the picture has the jagged energy of a long guerrilla raid choreographed by Bob Fosse. — Richard Corliss

I am told that sleep is a rehearsal for death. It is waking that kills us. — Sally Gardner

There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show-all are family. — John Kander

I think all the fight stuff. I'm cut out for that. I used to wrestle in high school so I really love it, yeah. I love all the fighting and martial arts. Hey, why am I not up there? Oh, it's just a rehearsal. Keep going. — Jaimie Alexander

I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop. — Martin Landau

I find it rather tedious working with some actors who have to go into a corner and bounce up and down, shake their hands and arms, saying to the director, "Just a second - I'll be ready in a few minutes, " while all the other actors are waiting around to get in. Then they say, "OK! I'm ready now." And then they come on and do it exactly the same way they've done it in rehearsal. — Elizabeth Taylor

When I go on the set, I'm so rushed. When I see the actors at rehearsal, when I love it, I want to keep the mood - my mood and the actors' mood also. So I have to push the crew faster. I don't want to lose the mood. — Andrew Lau

Yeah I'm still writing. I've got about 14 tracks now. But we've been on tour so we haven't had time to get back to a rehearsal place. — Ville Valo

He woke to quiet voices. This had been happening more and more lately, this nodding off unexpectedly, and it left him with an unsettled intimation of rehearsal. You fall asleep for short periods and then for longer periods and then forever. — Emily St. John Mandel

Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves. — Stephanie Clifford

Whatever you want your child to learn, you have to model that every day. There's no more waiting around. Once you have a child, there's no dress rehearsal anymore. — Autumn Reeser

In rehearsal you have a good accident that you can repeat.In the movies if you have a good accident you hope the camera's running. — Christopher Walken

I do have a vague recollection of reviving the cover of The Beatles' 'Every Little Thing,' but I don't know if that was just our riffing on it in rehearsal. I don't think we ever did it actually in the show. — Chris Squire

Cried Meg, and the rehearsal ended in a general burst of laughter. — Louisa May Alcott

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? — Milan Kundera

I played Lucky in Waiting for Godot at Yale and it was a thing that Stanislavski talks about: he says you don't need his 'method' if you can count on your inspiration and it was a moment of inspiration that came to me, not in rehearsal but on stage. It hit me right there in the middle of the play and it was great-it travelled into immediate communication. — Sam Waterston

People make mistakes and I've probably made a few more than others, but unfortunately mine are also a bit more public. That's the way it is. You've just got to get on with life. After all, it's not a rehearsal. — Shane Warne

When you audition for things, there's pressure to go in there with a complete performance, and it's kind of unfair because, if you get it, you'll have rehearsal and talk about it, and you'll have plenty of time with the script. So, for me, I really do feel like an audition is a sketch of what you might do. — Elisabeth Moss

I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf. — Jack Lemmon

It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head. — Bono

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

The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff. — Stephen Sondheim

I feel like we're between two great possibilities: we're either going to turn things around, and in this generation see the rising sun of a new moral dedication in America, or we're going to lose the struggle for that moral renewal, throw away the basic principles on which our life and civilization is based, and head toward a new century that will make the 20th century look like a dress rehearsal for evil. — Alan Keyes

My older brother was the guitar player in the neighborhood band. My parents were the cool ones that had the basement for rehearsal. Rather than hang with my peers after school, I wanted to just listen to the band. More than that, I wanted to play. — Jill Sobule

I think Julianne Moore is very, very good. I've worked with her. We did Surviving Picasso. I remember one scene we did together. She had to have a nervous, a mental, breakdown in this one scene.I didn't have many lines. I just had to make sure I knew I came in on cue all right. And I was just watching her walking though the rehearsal. I thought I know what she's doing, "This is going to be terrific." So they said, "Are you ready" and she said, "Yeah," "Ok, roll the camera." And all in one take. — Anthony Hopkins

I feel that once you go into rehearsal, you need to focus on the show in the room. — Scott Ellis

Sometimes the point isn't to end up with something worth showing the world. Sometimes it's just rehearsal. — Jennifer Weiner

My favorite part about working in theater is the rehearsal process. I absolutely love the rehearsal process. Working out the characters, figuring the character out, and the relationships between the different characters. I love all of that, which, unfortunately in film, you get very little opportunity to have. — Joseph Gatt

In the enormous whale-belly of steel and stone carved out to form the long-enduring old opera house, Rick Deckard found an echoing, noisy, slightly miscontrived rehearsal taking place. — Philip K. Dick

It's very rare to have rehearsal time on a television show: You get scripts, you show up, and you do it. — Tony Hale

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed. — Wayne W. Dyer

Whenever I've been in rehearsals, it's really fun, there's always laughing. — Adam Rapp

For me the rehearsal period is the part I most enjoy. It's the creating of the story. — Damian Lewis

I really miss the rehearsal process of theater. — Kurtwood Smith

Money is not important It is OK to lose in the markets Trading is a game Mental rehearsal is important for success They've won the game before they start[xlviii] — Bruce Bower

Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead. — John Banville

I design my shots. I walk the rehearsal as the camera and say 'this is where I want to be ... I want this look. — Debbie Allen

But I knew how the play would come out. This was like a dress rehearsal after the show has closed down. — Robert Penn Warren

I mean I feel like we've shot all these different movies. Like the first 2 weeks of shooting was all Steve Stills apartment and band rehearsal, you know? And so it was like this tiny little group of people and small set comparatively and it just looked like a Toronto apartment. And then we sort of kept ramping up further and further until now we're here in this giant like craziest set I've ever seen with LCD crazy lights that go ... you know? — Alison Pill

Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas. — Gore Vidal

I just want to leave you with this thought, that it's just been sort of a dress rehearsal, and we're just getting started. So if any of you start resting on your laurels, I mean just forget it, because ... we are just getting started. — Walt Disney Company

I gather from a lawyer that there was a rehearsal yesterday. We haven't a hope. I know the presiding judge too: I've had the misfortune to sleep with his wife. He was specially picked. — Alphonse Karr

Being a director, whether you're in rehearsal or you're in auditions or you're in a creative meeting, is so much to me about being present in the moment. There's a sense of time stopping. — Diane Paulus

I am sure if you went back to the days of 'My Fair Lady,' they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that. Now you have people tweeting and blogging immediately, so you may as well regard your first preview as your opening night because you are going to get reviews. — Tim Rice

I'm a theater actress. I love rehearsal. I could have six weeks of rehearsal and think it's not enough. But on film, you don't get that luxury. — Kelly Reilly

I loved having a crew. I loved being the person who woke at six in the morning and knew where to put the camera. I loved watching the actresses cry, and to know that if you were clever and didn't do too many rehearsals, that it just came that way. — Jane Birkin

In the theater you rehearse in order to do the performance. And in the movies the rehearsal and the performance are kind of the same thing. You're figuring it out and hopefully the camera is pointed at you when you're doing it. — Christopher Walken

Everything in The Room, we did it the same way the big studios do it. The only difference is the budget and the actors. We put an ad in Back Stage West and in return we got almost 8,000 headshots from people who wanted to be in the film. We then do a process of selection and a rehearsal process after they are selected. The process of audition is very time consuming. — Tommy Wiseau

Praise is the Rehearsal of Our eternal Song By Grace We learn to Sing, and in Glory We Continue to Sing. — Charles Spurgeon

You'd go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a dress rehearsal so they could get the effects and the music cues in place. Then you would wait until you went on the air. — Dick York

We had a lot of rehearsals for the original Twilight to get the family to learn each other and experience each other, so we could all be like a family. We spent a lot of time together. — Peter Facinelli

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it. — Emily Mortimer

Learn to say, "I don't know the answer." It could be the beginning of a very good day's rehearsal. — Sam Mendes

Each generation was a rehearsal of the one before, so that that family gradually formed the repetitive pattern of a Greek fret, interrupted only once in two centuries by a nine-year-old boy who had taken a look at his prospects, tied a string around his neck with a brick to the other end, and jumped from a footbridge into two feet of water. Courage aside, he had that family's tenacity of purpose, and drowned, a break in the pattern quickly obliterated by the calcimine of silence. — William Gaddis

'Birdman' is basically 'All About Eve' - the 1950 comedy about rehearsal rivalries in a Broadway show, and another Best Picture laureate - reimagined as a Batman suicide mission. The movie couldn't be actor-ier. — Richard Corliss

I usually go in ahead of time, like at a rehearsal, or a meeting, and tell them, "It may appear that I'm going to go haywire, but I'm not." I always map out what I'm going to do. Still, a lot of it is improvised. — Paul Reubens

We just started filming, and after every scene was shot, we had a rehearsal for the next one. — Rupert Grint

When I was younger, I never wanted to rehearse because I thought that someone would figure out I don't know what I'm doing. Now I like to really spend the time and figure it out, and rehearsal is to try something that doesn't work. — William Fichtner

Studios are passe for me. I'd rather play in a garage, in a truck, or a rehearsal hall, a club, or a basement. — Neil Young

The roadwork is just rehearsal for that DVD you're going to film a year later. — Jeff Dunham

When I go into rehearsal rooms and meet with bands, they're genuinely excited to be with me because of what I've done as an artist, not because of anything else. There's that whole celebrity rock star thing, and artists are into artists who have been able to achieve success their way. — Nikki Sixx

When I turned 50, I looked in the mirror and I thought: "Hey, this isn't the dress rehearsal, this is life and I don't know how much longer I'm going to have!" — Tina Fey

Johnny was great in the studio; he was there to make the music that he wanted to make. We lived right beside each other and had a rehearsal studio that was just ours, with nobody else using it, it was part of Johnny's house, so we could rehearse every day. — Rick Derringer

Learning to pray is dress rehearsal for eternal life. — Peter Kreeft

Work is your life, it's not a rehearsal. You work 7 days a week so you may as well enjoy those days. — Mario Testino

If you're still standing, and able to string two words together, that wasn't and orgasm."
She frowns. "What was it then?"
"A rehearsal. — Roxy Sloane

If one sits down and concentrates on imagining the worst possible surroundings for rehearsing a musical show, it's never as bad as the rehearsal rooms one actually lands in. — Hildegard Knef

On a film, they'll always say there's going to be a rehearsal period, and there never is. — Kevin Dunn

Running long offers a dress rehearsal. Running long teaches the stress of lifting feet 5,000 times per hour. Running long builds confidence. — Hal Higdon