Quotes & Sayings About Stage Play

EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up - through distance, differences, divorce, or death. — Mitch Albom

It's a huge, huge pressure that so many people depend on you. The type of player I am and people look at me to come out and perform a certain way. Not being able to play on the biggest stage of the season, it's frustrating. One thing I wanted to do was not be frustrated about it and figure out what I can do to change and better myself on the court. — Jermaine O'Neal

Markus definitely wasn't comfortable. He was sorry about having long legs; as regrets go, it certainly was a useless one.* Not to mention another fact that amped up his torture: there's nothing worse than being seated next to a woman you're dying with desire to look at. The show was to his left, where she was, not on stage. Not only that, but what was he seeing? It was so-so. The fact that it was a Swedish play wasn't exactly helping matters! Had she done it on purpose? As if that weren't enough, the playwright had studied in Uppsala. Might as well have dinner at his parents'. — David Foenkinos

If Shakespeare can compare all of life to a stage, maybe it's not odd to believe that part of the play can take place on a basketball court. — Bill Russell

I wanted to write songs that would play themselves on stage, songs that sweep you through their current. — K.d. Lang

Garbage time is that time at the end of the game when the points don't really matter, and nothing you do can really affect the overall outcome, but the rookies usually get a chance to play on the big stage. — Katie Nolan

Yeah, I think that a play is a huge commitment, and I think that what it requires of you is a lot, so it really makes you dig in and find things, and it just makes you sharp, 'cause it's live. Really, to me, it separates the men from the boys. I always say it's like the frontlines of acting, when you're on stage. — Yul Vazquez

I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with. — Alan Tudyk

Our only competition in the theater is boredom, because if I'm bored with a play, if I'm revolted by a play on stage, with the Broadway prices, especially today, I'm going to walk out and not come back and pay that price again. — Jerome Lawrence

Like actors taking a role in a play. We wear our human faces and harbor our dramas and fantasies, but it's the same individuals playing the parts, as the play starts anew on a different stage, with different faces and forms. If it all goes well, a figure from the crowd joins the stage for the plays that follow, and the roles are refined. — Wildbow

I can't walk very well, but I'm not onstage to do walking. I'm on the stage to play. — Itzhak Perlman

I've been on stage plenty of times, and one of the things about being a stage actress is you have a 3-month run to revisit the story nightly and play it again. — Rosamund Pike

It really comes down to Mick. He's the one who was constantly trying to get these five people in one room together. This is his love, his baby. It's his band, and there's nothing more he loves to do than get up on stage and play with us. — Christine McVie

What a thrill it was to play opposite Maurice Evans in this brilliant, dazzling musical, based on the life of two of the greatest personalities in stage history. — Dinah Sheridan

Bring into play the almighty power within you, so that on the stage of life you can fulfill your high destined role. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I was a stage actor for 20 years or so; I was leading men in classical things. 'Shakespeare,' you know. And now, I never play leading men. I'm that kamikaze comic that comes from the left, turns the table over, and leaves, or the hyper-intelligent yuppie scumbag if it's a drama. — John Michael Higgins

Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage, talking to the audience, looking at them and smiling, that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now, but there are still moments of awkwardness. — Norah Jones

There's so much to learn! And just when we think, "I've got it. I really understand what's going on," we're shown a whole new stage set on which to play. — Richard Bach

When I write a play, my whole intent at bottom is to get the audience to be in the cast, to get that audience on stage with the actors and to get them thoroughly involved in what's going on. — Jules Feiffer

I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage. — Neil Simon

I was still tough but it wasn't the same. I had to withdraw. I watched people from afar, it was like a stage play. Only they were on stage and I was an audience of one. — Charles Bukowski

Without the heart it's not worship, it's a stage play. — Stephen Charnock

Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action. — Rudolf Rocker

I would say I am more concerned with the plays I'm going to do than the movies. I'm more comfortable in a play. In film, there's always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there's more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through. — Al Pacino

I take the world to be but as a stage,Where net-maskt men do play their personage. — Guillaume De Salluste Du Bartas

Zachary looked down into the swirling morass that was his beer as the man walked onto the stage and started to play a solo piece, the band respectfully allowing him to start off his set by staking his claim. Zachary would give him staking his claim. He had his guitar nestling close by his side, as always, the leather of the case gently touching his calf, sending an almost erotic charge through his body every time he moved like the less than innocent brush of a future lover's hand on a bare arm. — Pete Langman

I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love. — Anton Chekhov

I'm very interested in silence. And, more importantly, in what happens when people aren't talking on stage. I'm interested in letting actors play and do things between the lines. And in slowing everything down. — Annie Baker

I had a really great time tonight. I got to eat great food, meet new people and even play on a stage with you. But you wanna know the best part of the whole night? It was when I got to pretend I was your boyfriend. — Marie Coulson

It takes a lot out of you to do a stage play, but I'd love to do that. I'd love to continue to do challenging material, whatever shape or form that comes in. — Jeremy Renner

I love playing with a full band, but there's just like a different feeling up on stage when you're playing with a smaller group. It's easier to play off each other. — Kris Allen

Comedians act every night on stage, so they have great performing chops. They especially know how to play themselves, which is how we set Teachers Lounge up. — Ted Alexandro

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience. — David Mamet

Waiting for a divine message from the skies? You are wasting your time! Message has been delivered once and for all when the universe was formed! The message is the rules of this universe! Try to understand the rules and play according to the rules! In the second stage, you can start changing the rules that you don't like! All is possible! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Does a man who is acting on the stage in a female part forget that he is a man? Similarly, we too must play our parts on the stage of life, but we must not identify ourselves with those parts. — Ramana Maharshi

Plays are literature: the word, the idea. Film is much more like the form in which we dream - in action and images (Television is furniture). I think a great play can only be a play. It fits the stage better than it fits the screen. Some stories insist on being film, can't be contained on stage. In the end, all writing serves to answer the same question: Why are we alive? And the form the question takes - play, film, novel - is dictated, I suppose, by whether its story is driven by character or place. — Israel Horovitz

To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what. — Chris Cornell

I used to throw up before I went on stage, every time. Even though it's only 200 people in the audience, and a movie like RoboCop is going to be seen by many, many people, I know I'd be much more nervous doing a play than being on set shooting. — Joel Kinnaman

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play. — Sam Shepard

The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit. — J.G. Ballard

I play in a band, I write songs, I sing, you know, perform on stage. — Adam Levine

I've never been an actor on Broadway, but it feels like you're on a stage when you play at Yankee Stadium. And that's the feeling I've always had. — Derek Jeter

Those times when I play on stage in front of lots of people, it's such an unusual and borderline unhealthy process, even though I love it and I really do it with humility. I don't have serfs getting me grapes after, or things like that. — Gavin Rossdale

And oh, heaven - the crowded playhouse, the stench of perfume upon heated bodies, the silly laughter and the clatter, the party in the Royal box - the King himself present - the impatient crowd in the cheap seats stamping and shouting for the play to begin while they threw orange peel on to the stage. — Daphne Du Maurier

A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden. — Arthur Adamov

No good play is a success; fine writing and high morals are useless on the stage. I have been scribbling twaddle for thirty-five years to suit the public taste, and I should know. — W.S. Gilbert

To come out here and play on Woodstock grounds, first year ever headlining on the main stage there's nothing more iconic. [Mysteryland] is one of those festivals that holds down the legacy of dance music it's been around for so many years. It's been part of what we do for so long. It kinda makes sense to bring the tradition over here to America. The festival grounds of Woodstock, that's pretty epic. — Steve Aoki

So far I had been travelling alone with my handbook and my Western Railway timetable: I was happiest finding my own way and did not require a liaison man. It had been my intention to stay on the train, without bothering about arriving anywhere: sight-seeing was a way of passing the time, but, as I had concluded in Istanbul, it was an activity very largely based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled. — Paul Theroux

A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene he heard the void filled with applause and, through a rift in a side scene, saw the simple body before which he had acted magically deformed, the void of faces breaking at all points and falling asunder into busy groups. — James Joyce

Words are harsh mistresses, to be sure. Like petulant divas, they want only those parts that play to their talents and mask their blemishes, and only when complete companies of players who love their parts are assembled will they sing in harmony. I am your director for this stage production and will employ my best wiles to create a performance both truthful, and beautiful. I know that words are tricksters who show one face to you and another to me, so I am never certain you'll hear in your head what I hear in my head. Since I deliver even this little truth with words, I acknowledge the irony. — Dennis Vickers

When a theater goes dark for the night, a stagehand leaves a lighted lamp on stage. No one knows why any more, but some old timers say it is to keep the ghosts away. Others say it lights the stage for the ghosts to play. Whichever theory one adheres to, most people agree: a great theater is haunted. — Emily Mann

There are so many huge roles in the theatre: if you've got the option to play Hedda Gabler on stage, why wouldn't you choose that over a three-line part in a Hollywood film as somebody's maid or somebody's wife or somebody's best friend? — Eve Best

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

But it is not time constraints alone that produce such fragmented and discontinuous language. When a television show is in process, it is very nearly impermissible to say, "Let me think about that" or "I don't know" or "What do you mean when you say ... ?" or "From what sources does your information come?" This type of discourse not only slows down the tempo of the show but creates the impression of uncertainty or lack of finish. It tends to reveal people in the act of thinking, which is as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage. Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it. It is, in a phrase, not a performing art. But television demands a performing art. — Neil Postman

I think the motion picture industry is a stupid business and I despise acting the scenes in short snatches, one at a time. I hate this film work. I am disgusted with myself. On the stage I could never play a part unless I felt it with all my heart and soul. — Conrad Veidt

After you've seen behind the facade of a stage set you can't take the play seriously any more. You can't go backwards and regain your ignorance; you have to move forward. — Zeena Schreck

A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery. — Karl Shapiro

You've got to love the villain if you have to play him. You've got to find something that you can live with in yourself if you're going to play the villain in a play on stage. — Jim Dale

The sexual stage invites lovers to become whoever they want, enticed with endless possibilities of characters, roles, situations and scenarios to play-act. It is a chance for us to trade in our self-imposed labels and everyday identity for something a little more adventurous. — Miya Yamanouchi

Generations of British writers would look up to Roget as a kindred soul who could offer both emotional as well as intellectual sustenance. In the stage directions to Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie includes an homage to Roget: The night nursery of the Darling family, which is the scene of our opening Act, is at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury. We might have a right to place it where we will, and the reason Bloomsbury is chosen is that Mr. Roget once lived there. So did we in the days when his Thesaurus was our only companion in London; and we whom he has helped to wend our way through life have always wanted to pay him a little compliment. For Barrie, Roget's masterpiece was synonymous with virtue itself. To describe the one saving grace of the play's villain, Captain Hook, Barrie adds, "The man is not wholly evil--he has a Thesaurus in his cabin. — Joshua Kendall

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening. — Charles Durning

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors. — Colin Wilson

I don't ever want to do a movie where you shoot it on a motion capture stage. I just don't like taking the reality out of it. I like being on the set in real environments. I don't like shooting on green screen. I think it gives the actors so much more to play with when there's real stuff happening on the set. — Michael Bay

I had never heard anyone play like Benny Goodman and had never seen anyone like him on the stage. I realize now that what impressed me and stayed with me in memory was - the sounds he made. He played so purely. The music seemed to come from him, not just the instrument he played with such mastery. — Marian Seldes

I don't get stage fright. I do get nervous before I play in front of big audiences [though]. — Jack Barakat

I hold the world but as the world ... - / A stage where every man must play a part — William Shakespeare

I'm not in Captain America because it takes place in the '40s. Both he and Bruce Banner are relationships that evolve during this - two more rock stars that I got to get on stage, ready to play ball. — Clark Gregg

The stage I chose
a subject fair and free
'Tis yours
'tis mine
'tis public property.
All common exhibitions open lie,
For praise or censure, to the common eye.
Hence are a thousand hackney writers fed;
Hence monthly critics earn their daily bread.
This is a general tax which all must pay,
From those who scribble, down to those who play. — Charles Churchill

The stage is yours, my dear Aaronic Priesthood boys. Are you ready and willing to play your part? The Lord needs every able young man to prepare and recommit, starting tonight, to be worthy of a call from the prophet of God to serve a mission. — Ronald A. Rasband

Any adaptation - and I've done three in my career. I did 'Sweeney Todd' and 'Hugo' and 'Coriolanus.' It's important to find what makes it a movie as opposed to just a film presentation of a stage play. — John Logan

Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise, and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a circus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxes and bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a long and bored winter's sleep under the dust? — Robert Anton Wilson

It was a wonderful life. To have a stage play right in this room, with real people acting real parts. — Jan Karon

Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if A Midsummer Night's Dream was really a dream? — Lewis Mumford

What I try to do in a play is put a problem on stage, head-on, without evasion. — Edward Bond

So successfully have we disguised from ourselves the intensity of our own feelings, the sensibility of our own hearts, that plays in the tragic tradition have begun to seem untrue. For a couple of hours we may surrender ourselves to a world of fiercely illuminated values in conflict, but when the stage is covered and the auditorium lighted, almost immediately there is a recoil of disbelief. "Well, well!" we say as we shuffle back up the aisle, while the play dwindles behind us with the sudden perspective of an early Chirico painting. By the time we have arrived at Sardi's, if not as soon as we pass beneath the marquee, we have convinced ourselves once more that life has as little resemblance to the curiously stirring and meaningful occurrences on the stage as a jingle has to an elegy of Rilke. — Tennessee Williams

Trey Spruance didn't want to tour for ages. And Dean Menta has always been our guitar-roadie during Angel Dust, and I remember him playing fantastically during soundchecks. During each gig, he was watching from the side of the stage, seeing Big Jim play stuff that he could play better. — Mike Patton

Would you like to play With the thought of a friend In a distant passing stage While you lie around With your hands up and out So resigned you will fall down. — Dave Matthews

On stage I have to be comfortable because I play guitar so I can't wear too much jewellery, it knocks against the guitar and makes loud noises. I had this big gold eagle necklace which I love but I kept whacking myself in the face with it so had to stop wearing it. I wear things that I can sweat in, basically ... it gets really hot on stage. — Ellie Goulding

The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It's a stream of information, but you've got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together. — Tom Stoppard

In the case of drama (stage, movies, television ), there appear to be people in almost every audience who never quite fully realize that a play is a set of fictional, symbolic representations. An actor is one who symbolizes other people, real or imagined. [ ... ] Also some years ago it was reported that when Edward G. Robinson, who used to play gangster roles with extraordinary vividness, visited Chicago, local hoodlums would telephone him at his hotel to pay their professional respects. — S.I. Hayakawa

You know, we're not on stage, we're not doing a play, so we don't have a relationship with the audience but going through that process and also just hearing how much people love the film, you feel like you do have a relationship with the audience. — Virginia Madsen

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage. — Jenny Lewis

Some part of me knew that I could play this part well, or better than well. But I was almost afraid to play it. The line between stage and life was so fragile here that I felt a risk of losing myself somehow. — J.B. Cheaney

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit. — Tom Peters

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've play'd, and lov'd, and ate, and drank your fill:
Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age
Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage. — Alexander Pope

I don't walk on stage unless I'm playing with a orchestra. But when I play a recital, I'm sort of on a scooter, and I just scoot very quickly on stage, and they're saying, wow, look at this. He's so fast. — Itzhak Perlman

My son is a great kid and does super well in school. I couldn't be prouder of him. What I tell him is, 'You don't want to just be known for being the son of a rich rock 'n' roll star.' I've seen a lot of kids like that. I want him to be happy, work hard and create his own thing. I tell him, 'You're not gonna be one of these kids up on stage playing with me. If you wanna have hits - write your own. Then we can play together.' — Kid Rock

Acting, to me, is being given the freedom and ability to play, and that's - that's what I love most about it. I feel very comfortable in playing, whether it be in front of a camera or on stage. — David Wenham

I would want to create an amphitheater outside of California where I would play everyday, and then people would have to come to me. I would create all this crazy stage decor and film it. Or I would just stay inside my home and do films. I would be like the modern Maya Deren. — Lykke Li

I've had a great deal of experience with adolescents over the centuries, and I've discovered that as a group these awkward half children take themselves far too seriously. Moreover, appearance is everything for the adolescent. I suppose it's a form of play-acting. The adolescent knows that the child is lurking under the surface, but he'd sooner die than let it out, and I was no different. I was so intent on being "grown-up" that I simply couldn't relax and enjoy life.
Most people go through this stage and outgrow it. Many, however, do not. The pose becomes more important than reality, and these poor creatures become hollow people, forever striving to fit themselves into an impossible mold. — David Eddings

When you're editing, you're putting it together in a way that makes sense metaphysically. You're not inventing it, but you're finding the story that's there. You're making a play that's eventually going to go on stage and present itself to an audience. You want to show what happened, not exactly what you have evidence of happening. — D. A. Pennebaker

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form. — Anatole Broyard

I'm in a difficult position in the sense that, preposterous as this might sound, I don't like being the centre of attention. I get up on stage every night and play songs, but I almost feel the songs are the centre of attention. I don't like opening my birthday presents in front of people, either. — Alex Turner

We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage. — Keith Jarrett

Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the director, whose job it is to grapple with the myriad complexities of moving a play from the page to the stage. — Terry Teachout

Let me explain: Like two great athletes who don't play on the same team but meet up on the world stage, blacks and women have always convened at the Oppressed Olympics and given each other a friendly head nod, similar to how when I'm in line at the grocery store and I notice the person in the next checkout line is also buying lemonade. — Phoebe Robinson

There are bands that I am friends with, who will invite me up on stage. Like Les Savy Fav, who have had me on stage, and I have played on their record. There are a couple of bands like that. Yo La Tango has invited me to play with them. — Fred Armisen

I can sleep anywhere! I can come off stage during the interval of a play, lie down for four minutes then wake up feeling better. — Helen McCrory

Unlike an envied and admirable few, I separate my friends and almost never dare mingle one group with another. When I do, it is usually a social disaster, like mixing drinks. I love good beer and I love good wine, but you cannot drink both on the same evening without suffering. I love the friends with whom I play or once daily played snooker and tooted quantities of high-grade pulverized Andean flake; I love the friends with whom I dine at preposterously expensive restaurants; I love the friends with whom I'm film-making or mincing on the stage. I love and value them all equally and don't think of them as stratified or in tiers, one group in some way higher or more important than the rest, but the thought of introducing them to each other makes me shiver and shudder with cringing embarrassment. — Stephen Fry

I think more obvious to others, is that I'm most vulnerable on stage. Even though I know which songs I'm going to play, I try and keep it loose and base my stage time more on what the audience is requesting of me. — Jason Mraz