Theatre Experience Quotes & Sayings

The deaf community is in a favorable position because they have a national theatre and training groups of their own to get them started. Deaf actors have often acquired very valuable skills and experience before they get their break. — Richard Masur

I believe movies are one of the great American art forms and the shared experience of watching a story unfold on screen is an important and joyful pastime. The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me. — Christopher Nolan

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred. — Walter Benjamin

Weren't movies his generation's faith anyway- its true religion? Wasn't the theatre our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects with a billion sermons- but the same movie showed in every mall in the country. And we all saw it. That summer, the one you'll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images ... flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that become our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? — Jess Walter

But theatre is always a difficult experience. — Isabelle Huppert

If you want more people to come to the theatre, don't put the prices at £50. You have to make theatre inclusive, and at the moment the prices are exclusive. Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience. — Catherine Tate

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it. — Charles Lamb

We try to place the human body in relation to the image all the time, so it's never a kind of a backdrop, but it's more of ... a much more integrative experience. — Simon McBurney

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

You are constantly looking for ways to do something you haven't done before, whether it's a particular role or doing theatre. As a person, I'm really open to experience. — Martin Henderson

You don't get paid a whole lot for theatre, but you know, I feel more like, 'Where could I buy this experience, and how much would it cost? Who else would give me this kind of focus and put me in a room with this kind of talent?' — Dennis Christopher

I think that music is crucially important in Shakespeare - and, clearly, was an important part of the Elizabethan theatre. And, it's always been something that was a profound element of the experience of Shakespeare that I have been drawn to - and interpreters have, as well. — Kenneth Branagh

A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through? — Emilia Clarke

I had a fascination with 3D that goes back to the View-Master. I'd always dreamed of making a film in 3D. It's like a combination of theatre and film. There's something 3D gives to a movie that takes you to another land. Working with RealD creatively was a liberating experience. Thank you RealD for allowing us to make something like Hugo. — Martin Scorsese

I suppose I'm really interested in theatre that provides an intensity of experience on another level. — Simon McBurney

The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being - that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This is the difference between the approach of the philosopher and that of the poet; the difference, to take an example from another sphere, between the idea of God in the works of Thomas Aquinas or Spinoza and the intuition of God in those of St. John of the Cross or Meister Eckhart - the difference between theory and experience. — Martin Esslin

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 had some experience writing collaboratively when I wrote for the theatre. — Jesse Kellerman

We know that modern art tends to realise these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theatre of metamorphoses and permutations. A theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself). The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience', transcendental empiricism or science of the sensible. — Anonymous

The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression. — Harold Pinter

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room. — Bruce Beresford

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience. — Emily Mortimer

I started to respect older actors when I was young and then contemporary actors later on. Then I learned respect for comedy. When I was first doing theatre, I thought of it as just a means to become Sarah Bernhardt or someone like that. But acting with young people has been a great learning experience. — Anne Meara

I think theatre helped, only because it was acting experience. I got to work with a lot of directors. — James Denton

Mum wasn't at all religious, but she thought that going to the theatre was as important a ceremonial, communal experience that a person could have. — Hayley Atwell

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts. — Joel Grey

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

Characters in TV and theatre tend to experience a lot of conflict, so I push myself through sport to physical and emotional levels that hurt so I've some other reference for extreme experience that isn't me shouting at my girlfriend or my mum. It's a way of controlling the uncontrollable. — Elliot Cowan

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17. — Gugu Mbatha-Raw

I've found a lot of the thinking in America is that a lot of people become actors to become famous. At least from my experience, I have a dozen or so British friends who are actors, and if you look at their body of work, and they'll go do theatre, and they'll go do this and this. They work, and they're always honing and trying to be better. — Nolan North

There's this thing in TV that I find hysterical where the writers and creators will ask us if you want to know what happens to your character or if you want to experience it episode by episode. In the theatre, we always know the ending; we always know where the character is going. — Carrie Coon

Audiences may experience an epiphany at a play, whether that play is consciously "Christian" or not; God is not limited by our conscious preparation (as artists or audiences). God's Spirit enters our lives in the most surprising of places-even in the theatre. — Todd E. Johnson

Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis. — James Agate

I had great faith in Irish actors, that they'd be hip to the whole theatre thing, and they are. I had no illusions of coming over here as some kind of big shot. It's been a learning experience for me too. — Christopher Meloni

Probably my first memory of theatre, the first one I guess that had an impact on me was when I saw my very first panto with my Primary School. I think just going there and experience that for the first time, being so young, it's something that's actually stuck with me right up until now. And to think back and to sort of remember that magic and that first little hint of it was brilliant. — Colin Morgan

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

To perform at the Cardiff Millennium Centre was amazing in itself - the theatre is an incredible venue and it was great to be performing so close to home. For me the best experience was in Glasgow, where I got to play Dee Dee for two weeks! The audience sang along to every song with such enthusiasm you actually couldn't hear yourself singing! That was incredible! — Francesca Jackson

I have written a couple of screenplays for studios, and each time has been less gratifying than the last. In my experience, they want no real representations of homosexuality, they want no complexity, they are terrified of ambiguity and unanswered questions - they don't know what they want, except that they want to make lots of money. The only freedom I've ever had as an artist has been in the theatre ... — Craig Lucas

If any theme runs through all my work, it is what Adrienne Rich once called "re-vision", i.e., the re-perceiving of experience, not because our experience is complex or subtle or hard to understand (though it is sometimes all three) but because so much of what's presented to us as "the real world" or "the way it is" is so obviously untrue that a great deal of social energy must be mobilized to hide that gross and ghastly fact. has a theatre critic (whose name I'm afraid I've forgotten) once put it," There's less there than meets the eye". Hence, my love for science fiction, which analyses reality by changing it. — Joanna Russ

We are reaching levels of high experiential comfort
and our standards will keep rising.
We want to feel, we want to experience,
we want to connect, we want intelligence,
and we want to play;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
A new theatre is on its way. — Natasha Tsakos

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having. — Kiefer Sutherland

A chief cause of unhappiness is what I call mental movies. Mental movies are a misuse of the imagination. You know how it goes. You have a painful experience with someone, then run it over and over in your mind. You visualize what you said, what he did, how you both felt. As awful as it is, you feel compelled to repeat the film day and night. It is as if you were locked inside a theatre playing a horrible movie. — Vernon Howard

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

The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain. — Matt Damon

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!' — David Mamet

My high school experience was kind of like 'Mean Girls.' It was very much like a bad B movie. 'This is where the jocks sit, and this is where the cheerleaders sit.' And I never really fit in. I guess I was sort of a theatre geek, but the activity that I was most invested in was speech and debate. — Andie MacDowell

Secret Cinema has created a new way of experiencing film. The fusion of film and theatre allows for a much more powerful experience and adds an incredibly unique dimension for the audience. It certainly did for me. I was blown away — Kevin Spacey

I did theatre all my life and then went into the film world. I then kind of segued into TV land, which is a different experience. — T. J. Thyne

I'm really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to theatre, and if that child has a great experience at a pantomime they will continue to come year after year. — John Barrowman

Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety. — Howard Barker

I spent a month in India and where I learnt an important word for me, for everything that had come before and after, and the was the word 'seva' - the work you do without wanting reward, simply for the work itself, for the spiritual, for the practice and the experience it gives you by doing that work. I began to realise it was something I was searching for all my life, that I was doing theatre not for myself but for something for a search, for a seeking for something that is behind that, to find a truth somewhere about us. — George Ogilvie

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by these emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience.
The aristocratic nature of art, however does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary, because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people. — Andrei Tarkovsky

I was very lucky. I left college, and Richard Eyre was in charge of the National Theatre. I was offered the lead in 'The Seagull' with no experience and went on to do five plays there. — Helen McCrory

I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul. — Christopher Eccleston

I fought back the tears that came with experiencing something as perfect and powerful as the performance I'd just had. That was what theatre was about - that kind of experience. We would never be able to recreate that again. Only the people here tonight would ever know what that show was like. Theater is once in a lifetime ... every time. — Cora Carmack

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

If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along. — Athol Fugard

A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it. — John Lahr

Right before I graduated from the national theatre school, I got the part of Roxie Hart in 'Chicago' in Copenhagen. That led to me playing it here in London. I was 26 when I came over for that. It was the first thing I did as a professional, and it is still the experience of my life. — Birgitte Hjort Sorensen

It's very important for us because we are viewers, first and foremost. We view more than we make. For us, it's important that the viewing experience is fun and thrilling and exciting and fresh and different. Those are our goals when we are writing something. When you watch it in the theatre, which I hope you will, how will you have the best experience possible? That's really important to us, and is the most thrilling. — Zal Batmanglij

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

I am a father, and sometimes I want to stay close to home. By varying the workplace, it gives me space to breathe. I enjoy theatre because it reminds me I'm mortal, and it's terrifying when it goes wrong but the most thrilling experience when it flies. — Colin Salmon

I have an Honors Degree in Drama from the University of Alberta, but when it was done I knew a life in modern theatre was not for me. While figuring out what the hell I might do instead of theatre, I spent a couple of days on a horror film doing stunt work. I'd never been behind the camera before, and I loved everything about it. I joined the local film co-op - The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta - because you could trade skills for experience. These indie filmmakers were making their own stuff their own way, all the time. Instant education. — Karen Walton