Vital Theatre Quotes & Sayings

Individual and corporate support is vital to building on London's leadership in the arts, and I hope others will join me in wanting to build on the National's role at the heart of modern theatre and sustaining it long into the future. — Lloyd Dorfman

There can only be two contexts of your life. Either you are the author of your life, or He (the Creator) is the author of your life.
People who feel that their creation is the responsibility of the Creator, find opportunities unexpectedly.
Those who feel that their lives are their own, have to fashion their own means. — Wasif Ali Wasif

STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow's rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future. — Peter Capaldi

A coward's courage is in his tongue. — Edmund Burke

I was sad to leave Europe in 1890, after my student days in Germany ... But then, once back in New York, I experienced an intense longing for Europe, for its vital tradition of music, theatre, art, craftsmanship ... I felt bewildered and lonely. How was I to use myself? — Alfred Stieglitz

Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties? — Peter Brook

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

What I do believe is theatre is a medium with a peculiar ability to air vital issues. — Samuel West

If all I do in my life is soothe someone's spirit with a song , then let me do that and I'm happy. — Gladys Knight

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

And we feel things less than we did when we were kids, because we've grown so much scar tissue, or our senses have dulled. — Charlie Jane Anders

Feral cats are remarkably silent compared to domestic cats (except during fighting and courtship, notoriously noisy activities); in particular, such cats rarely meow at one another, whereas the meow is the pet cat's best-known call. The meow is usually directed at people, so rather than being an evolved signal it's more likely to have been shaped by some kind of reward. Cats need to meow because we humans are generally so unobservant. — John Bradshaw

In sharp contrast, the blessings are speeches of new energy, for they promise future well-being to those who are without hope. In the deathly world of riches, fullness, and uncritical laughter, those who now live in poverty, hunger, and grief are hopeless. They are indeed nonpersons consigned to nonhistory. They have no public existence, and so the public well-being can never extend to them. But the blessings open a new possibility. So the speech of Jesus, like the speech of the entire prophetic tradition, moves from woe to blessing, from judgment to hope, from criticism to energy. The alternative community to be shaped from the poor, hungry, and grieving is called to disengage from the woe pattern of life to end its fascination with that other ordering, and to embrace the blessing pattern. — Walter Brueggemann

Lou Tyrrell has created a theatre that is a safe haven for playwrights, a birthing center for new American writing. Arts Garage has created a vital, enthusiastic audience for theatre, music, painting and sculpture in Delray Beach. — Israel Horovitz