Quotes & Sayings About Theatre Plays

It's very lucky to be able to do a job where I get to sit about writing plays all day and going to the theatre. The downside, I suppose, is that you put it out there, and people are invited to like it or loathe it. — Laura Wade

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

I can never say that I will never return to musical theatre. There may be a part in the future that I really want to do. I love plays as well. I am very open to ideas. I hope to do many things in the future. — Sarah Brightman

The trick to loneliness is to spend a lot of time inside one's head. — Pat R

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

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

The real thing is, you should be seeing these plays in the Theatre. That's what they were written for. That's where the enjoyment is. Studying them is no enjoyment whatsoever. — Tony Randall

If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul. — William Shakespeare

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

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays. — Beth Henley

Directing is something I always wanted to do. I started when I was 13 directing scenes in high school and then plays in college with my theatre company. — David Schwimmer

Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare. — Alan Ayckbourn

I don't see why people want new plays all the time. What would happen to concerts if people wanted new music all the time? — Clive Barnes

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

There wasn't anyone in my family who was involved in the theatre. I saw a few amateur plays when I was growing up, but I can't think of anything that happened or anybody in particular who inspired me; it all came from within. — Garry Hynes

We had a great dramatics department in school, so I did a lot of plays and theatre there. Later, when I was the captain of our student's ward, I figured out that if you find something you really love to do, you don't have to work for the rest of your life! You can just have fun and still excel in it because you enjoy what you do. — Randeep Hooda

Television has dried up for my generation, so it's plays and films. You get used to being lazy doing films, but classical theatre's going to finish me off. — Michael Gambon

I don't like the theatre. I like plays in which the audience is addressed by the actors. I don't like seeing people talking to each other on stage as if there isn't an audience. — Jonathan Meades

Every play should be 90 minutes. There would be so many more theatre-goers if plays were shorter. — Eve Myles

So always avoid banality. That is, avoid illustrating the author's words and remarks. If you want to create a true masterpiece you must always avoid beautiful lies: the truths on the calender under each date you find a proverb or saying such as: "He who is good to others will be happy." But this is not true. It is a lie. The spectator, perhaps, is content. The spectator likes easy truths. But we are not there to please or pander to the spectator. We are here to tell the truth. — Jerzy Grotowski

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

The Greeks believed that it was a citizen's duty to watch a play. It was a kind of work in that it required attention, judgement, patience, all the social virtues."
"And the Greek were conquered by the more practical Romans, Arthur."
"Indeed, the Romans built their bridges, but they also spent many centuries wishing they were Greeks. And they, after all, were conquered by the barbarians, or by their own corrupt and small spirits. — Timberlake Wertenbaker

Places like the National Theatre or Sheffield, these great engines of theatre, make us cutting edge because they can be experimental. They can do plays that nobody else can afford to do in ways nobody else can afford to do. — Toby Stephens

We have a desperate need for producers in the [commercial Broadway] theatre, and it is very hard for them to get money and find investors for new plays. — Arthur Laurents

Mankind has invented the mirror in vain, for there's nobody in this world who looks into the mirror and sees himself as he truly is; each person has his own mirror hidden in his own mind and he can't see more than what that mirror in his mind reflects! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I decided to have a regular childhood and not pursue [acting] until I left school, although I wrote plays, directed plays, and got involved in theatre at school. When I left school I decided that's that I was going to pursue and gave it a crack. — Karl Urban

The Greeks think they justly honor players, because they worship the gods who demand plays; the Romans, on the other hand, do not suffer an actor to disgrace by his name his own plebeian tribe, far less the senatorial order. And the whole of this discussion may be summed up in the following syllogism. The Greeks give us the major premise: If such gods are to be worshiped, then certainly such men may be honored. The Romans add the minor: But such men must by no means be honoured. The Christians draw the conclusion: Therefore such gods must by no means be worshiped. — Augustine Of Hippo

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

I came to Mozambique in 1986, when I first became involved with Teatro Avenida - a theatre company that stages plays concerned with political and social issues. — Henning Mankell

Write plays that matter. Raise the stakes. Shout, yell, holler, but make yourself heard. It's time for playwrights to reclaim the theatre. We do that by speaking from the heart about the things that matter most to us. If a play isn't worth dying for, maybe it isn't worth writing. — Terrence McNally

Small boys often produce their own plays; but usually the parts are not written out. They hardly need to be, for the main line of each character is always "Stick 'em up!" In these plays the curtain is always rung down on a set of corpses, for small boys are by nature through and uncompromising. — A.S. Neill

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly. — Howard Barker

I was very fortunate that a teacher saw that I read a lot and got bored very easily and had a lot of energy, so she said, 'You've got to go to this youth theater.' I joined Manchester Youth Theatre when I was really young, and I just loved putting on and being involved in plays and telling stories. — Justin Chadwick

This outfit called Los Angeles Theatre Works does readings of plays. — Jeffrey Jones

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

I used to go with my parents and loved it, I was in school plays, and I started reading plays before I started reading novels. I'll defend it to the hilt. When theatre is good it is fabulous. — Patrick Marber

Don't forget that the boat and the water are in love with each other; you should never let them on their own; lo and behold, they have made an agreement with the wind and gone off on their honeymoon! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Your job as actors is to understand the size of what you say, to understand what's beneath the word. — Stella Adler

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

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

TEN [exploding]. Bright! He's a common ignorant slob. He don't even speak good English!
ELEVEN [slowly]. He doesn't even speak good English. — Sherman L. Sergel

I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void. — Sam Claflin

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

JOHNNY: Friends! Outcasts. Leeches. Undesirables. A blessing on you, and upon this beggars' banquet. This day we draw a line in the chalk, and push back against the bastard pitiless busybody council, and drive them from this place for ever. I, Rooster Byron, your merciless ruler, have decreed that today all my bounty is bestowed upon you, gratis. There will be free booze, bangers, draw, whizz and whatnot, for all the minions of my kingdom. — Jez Butterworth

I had a very nice, cozy childhood. I did lots of plays at school and worked with the National Youth Theatre as a teenager. — Lucy Punch

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

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

May God bequeath everyone the gift of listening to the voice of their conscience! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It is more frightening but it is not less productive to go your own way, to form your own theatre company, to write and stage your own plays, to make your own films. You have an enormously greater chance of eventually presenting yourself to, and eventually appealing to, an audience by striking out on your own, by making your own plays and films, than by submitting to the industrial model of the school and studio. — David Mamet

There's a great charm in theatre; I enjoyed doing it for twelve years and did lots of plays. At this chapter of my life, I am a cinema actor, and I would like to continue to be so, and at some point I would return to the theatre. — Boman Irani

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that. — Billy Bob Thornton

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

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

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 became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

If you spend a hundred bucks, or more, to go to the theatre, something should happen to you. Maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your values, or about the way you think about things. Maybe you should come out of the theatre, something having happened to you. Maybe you should be changing, or thinking about changing. But if you just go there, and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted a hundred bucks. — Edward Albee

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

More often than not, theatre critics bubble with enthusiasm about plays that are, when all is said and done, really pretty average. — Craig Brown

A lot of my training is in classical theatre; I've done a lot of classical plays in New York and also at the Guthrie and here and there across the country. — Laila Robins

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

Still, it was impossible to deny: Going all the way to London without taking time out to attend a few horrendous plays was like making a special trip to Hell without ever asking to meet Satan. So this time around, I decided to plunge in headfirst. Never a fan of Noel Coward, I nonetheless reported to the Albery Theatre, forked over a king's ransom for a good seat, and watched Alan Rickman act up a storm in Private Lives. — Joe Queenan

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