Theatre Play Quotes & Sayings

It's great to do small plays in the theatre and then go off with Blur and play in front of thousands of people. — Phil Daniels

The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage. — Andrzej Wajda

Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play. — Norman Wisdom

When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play. — Raul Esparza

To a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better. — George Bernard Shaw

This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?"
"To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said.
"To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice. — Mary Stanton

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs. — Roman Payne

In many ways, theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall - that when the play is finished, it's done - but now I realise it's more like gardening; you plant the thing, then you have to constantly tend it. You're part of a thing that's living. — Lee Hall

There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead. — Robert Edmond Jones

Playing Shakespeare requires technique. You don't play a Bach toccata by getting in the mood. — Kevin Kline

You never get anywhere until you figure out the difference between passion and compassion. — Cynthia Heimel

I go to the theatre expecting to have a good time. I want each play and performance to take me somewhere. Naturally, this doesn't always happen. — John Lahr

Never meddle with play-actors, for they're a favoured race. — Miguel De Cervantes

Even if the play is great, every day in theatre you have to question everything because the audience is new every day. I love that. — Clotilde Hesme

I'm still trying to write. I wrote a play a few years ago, so I'm trying to start writing again. The play was called The Commons Of Pensacola. It was at MTC [Manhattan Theatre Club] with Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner. It was kind of like a riff on Ruth Madoff. — Amanda Peet

I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway. — Lynn Nottage

The commercial theatre may still be considered one of New York's primary tourist attractions, but ... there is no longer an audience for serious Broadway plays ... Perhaps we should acknowledge that, having lost its traditional audience, Broadway can never again be a home for new plays. — Robert Brustein

When I was asked to play 'Miss Marple,' I was given the Kevin Elyot script for 'The Body in the Library.' I was a fan of his theatre work anyway, and I just thought it was brilliant. I was immediately taken by 'Miss Marple,' so I read some of the novels, and I knew I had to do it. — Geraldine McEwan

Each of us is in the world for no very long time, and within the few years of his life has to acquire whatever he is to know of this strange planet and its place in the universe. To ignore our opportunities for knowledge, imperfect as they are, is like going to the theatre and not listening to the play. The world is full of things that are tragic or comic, heroic or bizarre or surprising, and those who fail to be interested in the spectacle that it offers are forgoing one of the privileges that life has to offer. — Bertrand Russell

The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays. — Stella Adler

It is very hard to cast a number of plays adequately from the same company of actors without several parts being miscast. — John Gielgud

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears [ ... ] — Edgar Allan Poe

In avant garde drama ... primitivism goes hand in hand with aesthetic experimentation designed to advance the technical progress of the art itself by exploring fundamental questions: What is a theatre? What is a play? What is an actor? What is a spectator? What is the relation between them all? What conditions serve this best? — C. D. Innes

The idea for Anthem the play began over twenty years ago. I was assisting in the production of another Ayn Rand work, Ideal. I moved to New York and began working on producing the play with my partners. And as a way to raise money to cover some venture debt, we decided to stage Anthem for a limited run at the Lex Theatre in Hollywood. — Jeff Britting

Charity in the theatre usually begins and ends with people who have a play opening the week following one's own. Their unlikely benevolence is not so much a purity of heart as the knowledge that they face a firing line with rifles aimed in exactly the same direction. — Moss Hart

It is hard to get good actors who also do television, ads and films. Theatre requires six weeks of rehearsal for a play. — Lillete Dubey

I had my appendix removed in my 20s. I was in the middle of a play with Helen Mirren at the Royal Court Theatre, a fabulous career break. Then two weeks in I began suffering the most horrendous pain and had to pull out. Sadly, by the time I'd recovered, the show's run had ended. — Cherie Lunghi

I switched to thoughts of the play. It was by far the healthiest item to concentrate on. Rehearsals were only days away; there is something wildly exciting about a company assembling for the first time on stage. There is also something strangely sexy about it. I can't pin it down, there just is. — James Kirkwood Jr.

I have always added dance to my productions. When I was directing theatre, I added dance sequences where they didn't exist in the play. I think dance is the ultimate form of expression. — Valerie Weiss

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves ... — Susan Cooper

Money's never an issue. I can go and work for a small studio theatre somewhere if it's a play I really care about, or do TV or a big commercial West End show. — Conleth Hill

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

Because I like theatre and I love a challenge. With 'ZEBRA!' I've found a new Australian play where I can create a character first - that's what I live to do. — Bryan Brown

When I play, I feel like I'm in a theatre, why should I look ugly then, because I'm a tennis-player? — Anna Kournikova

There's such a sense of theatre in getting glammed up; it's like putting on a play or short film. — Felicity Jones

Whether you are a writer or an actor or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else. — Lee Hall

I appreciate good criticism and I think it's really important. I don't like it when it's consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I've written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it's important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another. — Adam Rapp

I've made a point of trying not to play the same part, and of moving between theatre and film and TV. The idea is that by the time you come back, you have been away for a year and people have forgotten you. If you like having time off, which I do, that's a good career strategy. — Aidan Gillen

Totus mundus agit histrionem. (All the World's a Stage.)
[Motto of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (f. 1599) and its acting company, The King's Men; taken from the first play to be performed on the new stage.] — William Shakespeare

Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15. — Dawn French

Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence ... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play. — Jean Cocteau

I was five when I did my first show with the Mountain Play Theatre company in Marin County. I started young, and since no one in my family was involved in the industry in any way shape or form, I think everyone thought I'd do a few plays and that would be it. But then I kept doing it. — Claire Coffee

A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor. — Eric Bentley

Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business. — Anton Chekhov

Play well, or play badly, but play truly. — Constantin Stanislavski

I've actually been looking at plays, and I have read a bunch of stuff. I would love to do it. I have thought about theatre on and off over the years, but other things kept getting in the way. Maybe now's the time. — Jerzy Jeszke

We were like two performers in a play, but we were divided, we were not acting with one another. We had to endure it alone, we had to put up this show, this miserable, sham performance for the sake of all these people I did not know and did not want to see again. — Daphne Du Maurier

The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study. — Peter Ackroyd

Everyone has a different path. I knew no one in the acting industry growing up. I never did a play until college. I was not outspoken when I was younger and I hated being the center of attention. But I had a dream of being an actor. I went to NYU and studied theatre. I learned a craft. And began my career straight out of college. — Peter Facinelli

You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something. — Kenneth Haigh

If you want a commercial success - it's the confusion of commerce with art. A successful play is not considered to be the best written. It is the one that sells the most tickets. Those standards are destructive [to theatre]. — Edward Albee

Pass the popcorn, please. Life is a film, theatre, a theatre of the soul. We play different roles on different stages. At death, we walk offstage. At birth, we walk onstage. — Frederick Lenz

There are ways in which you can make sure that even if people come to the theatre because they know an actor or actress, by the end, they've forgotten that, and they leave going, 'Wow - what an amazing play.' — Kevin Spacey

As a kid, we had one television channel and a sad little roller rink. And there was not much else to do. So I used my imagination all of the time growing up. That's the main way I played. When we moved and I went to high school, I did my first play, and I was completely addicted to theatre. It felt like home; it felt natural. — Darby Stanchfield

When I was in college, all the pretty women were in the theatre, so I auditioned for a play. — Judd Nelson

Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness. — Ruth Padel

I don't approve of censorship. I like the French theatre idea. Put on the play, and if the audience doesn't care for it, or feels offended by it, they rip up the seats. — John Huston

I think theatre is a democratic act and I think writing a play is not a democratic act. I think we should give writers more leeway and space to write the thing they want to write, and then we should produce the play, multiple times, and let them re-write it. — Sarah Ruhl

Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open. — George Jean Nathan

I recently did a play, Athol Fugard's 'Coming Home' at Long Wharf Theatre, where I played one character throughout - I sat at a table and didn't have any costume changes. Following one character's arc from beginning to end is a whole different mindset. — Colman Domingo

I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet.' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it. — Alan Cumming

The first act's doubtful, but we say, it is the last commends the play. — Robert Herrick

The dogged effort to "denaturalize" gender in this text emerges, I think, from a strong desire both to counter the normative violence implied by ideal morphologies of sex and to uproot the pervasive assumptions about natural or presumptive heterosexuality that are informed by ordinary and academic discourses on sexuality. The writing of this denaturalization was not done simply out of a desire to play with language or prescribe theatrical antics in the place of "real" politics, as some critics have conjectured (as if theatre and politics are always distinct). It was done from a desire to live, to make life possible, and to rethink the possible as such. — Judith Butler

I wish I had read more and majored in literature rather than theatre. I think I would have been a better artist for it. I am trying to play catch-up now. — Idina Menzel

I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first, I wanted to work in the theatre, but there was something about the ambience of film, especially American films, that always attracted me. — Jean Reno

It hath evermore been the notorious badge of prostituted Strumpets and the lewdest Harlots, to ramble abroad to Plays, to Playhouses; whither no honest, chaste or sober Girls or Women, but only branded Whores and infamous Adulteresses, did usually resort in ancient times. — William Prynne

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in. — William Shakespeare

I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn't so, nor will it be made so. — John M. Ford

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

Don't brood; that way madness lies. Don't hesitate, if you catch yourself brooding, to 'take a day off' in the best way you can. Go out and gossip with your friend; get to a theatre where there is a play that will make you laugh; or try a concert or a cinema show - anything that will take you out of yourself. Take the brooding habit in time before it gets too strong a hold of you. — Blanche Ebbutt

I loved the theatre-my dad gave me many plays and books to read. The dramatic form just spoke to me. — Danny Burstein

I was called to audition for a play when I was very young, following which I continued to act as well as write and direct. When I moved to Delhi and joined Hindu College, theatre became a very big part of my life. — Imtiaz Ali

Yes, it is a rehearsed show, yes, it was analogy of going to see a play at the theatre, where everything has to be in place and whole things, everything being works, all works together to get the best effect you know it's more like an actor learning a part. — John Deacon

I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon, you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be called off. Of course, if the evening goes well and you get the applause, then it's wonderful. — Charles Dance

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks / Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks / The founder's you; the table is this place / The carvers we; the prologue is the grace / Each act a course, each scene, a different dish. — George Farquhar

Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible. — Neil Gaiman

The walk is like a matrix, like a diffuse, vague happening. It's like - imagine a play, a work of theatre, that is totally vague, almost devoid of details that consists in one person going on a walk. And as a consequence, there is a necessary tension between the determinacy and indeterminacy, the definite and the indefinite, of possibility. — Sergio Chejfec

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. — Oscar Wilde

Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and should be centered on acting in plays rather than just exercises, improvisations, monologues, or even scenes. — Richard Hornby

I got the call to play Tony Manero in 'Saturday Night Fever' in Madrid, a role I'd always wanted, as it's such a well-constructed show, and my background is in musical theatre. I'd been travelling back and forth between London and Spain for auditions and had been borrowing money from friends to do it. — Juan Pablo Di Pace

There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made. — Edward Albee

Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt. — John Lahr

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name. — Patrick Macnee

Theatre has so many competitors, it's no longer enough to see and hear a play. You want to be able to touch and smell it, too. — Lucien Bourjeily

I love going to see the theatre whether it's a Broadway play or a Russian ballet company. — Michael Ealy

All actors know that the real adrenaline rush is in doing theatre. There is an immediate connect, and a role in a play, for an actor, is the biggest temptation. — Lillete Dubey

Life in the theatre isn't necessarily when you get money from performing. It isn't when you sign a contract. It isn't even when you are in a play. It's when you understand it. If you understand it, you'll know why you want to act. — Stella Adler

If Anthem finds an audience in New York City, my hope would be to see the play transferred to a commercial theatre for an open-ended run. — Jeff Britting

I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture. — Billy Bob Thornton

Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken. That's why I think so many really powerful novelists can't write a play - because they don't understand that it's spoken - that it hits the air. They don't get that. — Sam Shepard

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

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 was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores. — Charles Bukowski

Any play I do, anything I do in the theatre, it's absolutely essential for me in a sense, to create a family, to put a group of people together who love to share together what they're doing, rather than be individuals. — George Ogilvie

I wanted to be a musical theatre actress - I wanted to play Sally Bowles, forever and ever always. — Carey Mulligan

A play is a painting that moves. Instead of it holding still, and you are looking at it, you hold still and it scrolls by. — Patricia Zipprodt

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself. — Donald Pleasence

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

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

The Greeks, or more correctly the Athenians, invented the idea of theatre, as they invented so many other social and cultural institutions which the west then came to take for granted. There is nothing self-evident about the idea of theatre, of plays and players through whom private individuals, lacking priestly or other authority, publicly examined man's fate and commented on it by a poetic play which, despite the many traditional elements, was in its essential qualities a creation of the playwright. — Moses I. Finley