Theatre Director Quotes & Sayings

Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act. — James Agate

I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky. — Alan Bennett

I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston

I used to do a Saturday drama group called Young Blood Theatre Company with school-friends in west London - nothing to do with my mum and dad. A casting director came to pick people out for a new BBC children's series called 'MI High.' She picked me, I auditioned, and I got the job. — Bel Powley

I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies. — Stephen Daldry

My high school musical did not offer a shirtless Zac Efron but it did provide me with many lessons. I learned that I loved being in a theatre, attending rehearsals, and building sets. I loved listening to the director and groaning about rehearsing choreography — Amy Poehler

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

The man who raised me is black. Culturally, he made me who I am. He was a theatre director, so he also guided me artistically. — Vin Diesel

I have walked many times around the world and each time it's different from the last one. It feels a little bit like I am a theatrical director, creating a theatre in space. It's really a theater in the sky. But of course the World Trade Center is certainly the most well-known of my productions. — Philippe Petit

It's easier to go from theatre to film than the other way round. In film you're absolutely loved and cossetted and cared for. In film your director makes your performance. In theatre you're carrying it all. — Ian McKellen

Theatre is really difficult, so it's important that you have a director that kind of understands that and is really hands on. — Jimmi Simpson

When I am shooting, I am inside the theatre, when I am in the editing room, I am inside the theatre. I always try to feel what they will feel. I see a film, not as a director, but as the audience. If I am entertained, they will be, too. — Rohit Shetty

I wanted to become a director before I wanted to become a writer. When I was 10, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said, 'Walt Disney.' I wanted to make films. But I wasn't offered a camera. I was offered language. So I started telling stories in the theatre and then in my novels. — Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

I've never quite understood the idea of a "season." Whenever an artistic director says to me, 'I have this slot,' I always start to feel we're parking cars or something. — David Henry Hwang

Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest. — Jean Douchet

My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer. — Orson Scott Card

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

An actor and a [theatre] director are both what I would call interpreters of work. We interpret a work, just as a musician will interpret a composer's work, we interpret the work of a playwright. We are servants of the theatre and I've always believed that. We must serve what has been written, that's what we're there for. — George Ogilvie

I hadn't studied theatre and I hadn't studied actor training or anything, but I did have a sense of movement and composition, and what the final product would be like, but luckily I had friends who were good actors, who would help me get them, who would get themselves to the place where a good director should get them to build characters. — Rob Urbinati

When people ask me if musical theatre should be taught in music colleges, I reply that there is no need. All anyone needs to study is the second act of La Boheme because it is the most tightly constructed piece of musical theatre that there is. It is practically director-proof: you can't stage it badly because it just works too well. If you can write La Boheme, you can write anything. I would also recommend studying Britten's Peter Grimes. — Andrew Lloyd Webber

Whenever I'm in theatre situations I will go out of my way not to talk about my father, but in the film world I can be really proud of my family and say, 'You know what: my dad's a really, really famous theatre director,' because nobody has any idea. — Rebecca Hall

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience. — Ian McKellen

The idea of making audiences feel like they matter, that the theatre matters, and that they're a partner in the event - that's what fuels me as a director ... I believe it's actually radical to think about the audience. — Diane Paulus

I deliberately look for colorful people. They're very right for theatre. Theatre has to be theatrical. If you can get color into the accountant, you've got something. Write the whole thing first and then say he's an accountant. That's a very wacky accountant, but so what? Theatricality feeds and challenges the actor, the director, and the designers. — Lanford Wilson

Theatre has been a part of my life since before I can remember - my dad is also an actor and a director and a storyteller who lives and works in the Twin Cities; my mom is a nurse practitioner, but she also grew up doing theatre - so, it has always been a part of my experience. — Seth Numrich

By the time I was seven, I did a sonnet at Shakespeare's Globe theatre for Shakespeare's birthday because my dad had been at the first season of the Globe and was friends with the artistic director. Somehow, that lead to me doing a sonnet! — Alfred Enoch

I suppose as an actor you become very sensitive to rhythm, not just rhythm as you look at it sort of from the, from the outside as a director might see it, but within yourself you become used to the idea of hearing your fellow actors, responding to them in space. — Simon McBurney

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it. — Stephen Daldry

The director is responsible for interpreting the playwright's work through the cast with the help of the staff. It is the director's artistic concept of the play that the cast, staff, and crew work to obtain. — Laurence Sterne

When I began to direct, I began to understand and realise that everything that I'd learnt, both in music and dance and in the theatre, seemed to come together as a director, and I began to enjoy it. And slowly I let the acting go. — George Ogilvie

The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor. — Paul Scofield

In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me. — Anne-Marie Duff

Lighting is not about function. It's much more about the mood and the emotion that the playwright and the director are trying to create. Our job is to support their poetic direction. — Jules Fisher