Skip to main content

Theatre Quotes

How to Search

  • To browse quotes by category, leave the Search box empty and choose a category, then click the "Search" button.
  • To find a quote with a specific word, enter a single word in the Search box, then click the "Search" button.
  • To find a quote by a specific person, enter their name in the Search box, then click the "Search" button. Tip: Searching by using only the person's last name usually works best.

Displaying 201 - 220 of 425
  • " People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'"

    - Edward Albee



  • " A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage."

    - Edward Albee



  • " An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote. A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills."

    - Mark Leslie



  • " Definition of Stage Manager: The person who rarely gets credit when everything goes right."

    - Anonymous



  • " Eugene Lee is a set designer who's famously said that he hates scenery. The reason it's such a joy to work with him is he's never designing the scenery, he's designing the room in which theater is going to take place. It makes for a much more vibrant conversation about what we're going to work on together. [Oskar Eustis , artistic director of the Public Theater, Boston]"

    - Oskar Eustis



  • " I've always tended to work with the set as another character in the play."

    - George Pinney



  • " I want everyone to feel as much as possible as if they inhabit the same space. They more fluid the relationship between actor and audience, the better."

    - Christine Jones



  • " I have a large personal collection of pictures. For every project, I choose images. Usually I don't do this until I've done an extensive script breakdown and distilled the text down to poetic form. I have to plant enough seeds so that there will be vibration."

    - Christine Jones



  • " If I weren't a theatre designer, I wouldn't be any other kind of designer. Design is interesting to me as it relates to narrative: the design has to support the narrative. Storytelling is the most important thing."

    - Christine Jones



  • " Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!"

    - Nathan Lane



  • " In musical theater you have to be very big and very animated, while film and television are more toned down."

    - Kevin Richardson

    Source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/kevinricha292397.html



  • " Acting is the most personal of our crafts. The make-up of a human being - his physical, mental and emotional habits - influence his acting to a much greater extent than commonly recognized."

    - Lee Strasberg



  • " The two happiest days in a theatre person's life: The day you start on a new show and the day the thing closes."

    - Unknown



  • " Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live."

    - Shelley Winters



  • " The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature. [Hamlet]"

    - William Shakespeare

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips



  • " The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor."

    - Paul Scofield

    Source: The Audience Book of Theatre Quotations, by Louis Phillips



  • " The subjective actress thinks of clothes only as they apply to her; the objective actress thinks of them only as they affect others, as a tool for the job."

    - Edith Head



  • " Lighting design is ultimately not about numbers and calculations. It is about feelings and spontaneous reactions. Although the designer can calculate how 'big and bright' a fixture will be at any distance, from the manufacturer's data sheet, eventually he must just instinctively 'know', how a specific fixture will perform at any distance. This comes from both practice and experience."

    - Bill Williams

    Source: Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams



  • " The first rule of stage lighting is...there aren't any."

    - Bill Williams

    Source: Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams



  • " Ultimately, the lighting designer must be an artist! He must understand style, composition, balance, esthetics and human emotions. He must also understand the science of light, optics, vision, the psychology of perception and lighting technology. Using these tools the lighting designer must learn to think, feel and create with his heart."

    - Bill Williams

    Source: Lighting Mechanics, by Bill Williams