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Theatre Quotes

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Displaying 261 - 280 of 425
  • " Why don't I just give you some money, then you can buy whatever you want to wear on stage. You obviously want a shopper, and I am merely a designer. [said to an uncooperative actress during a costume fitting]"

    - Nan Cibula-Jenkins

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


  • " Next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business. [Birdie, in All About Eve]"

    - Joseph Mankiewicz

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


  • " Has anyone understood that the basic thing about Elizabethan theatre is that it was played in daylight? The actor saw the eyes of the audience."

    - Peter Hall

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


  • " Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light."

    - David Belasco

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


  • " If I am so insistent about the bright lights, both the stage and house lights, it is because I should in some way like both actors and audience to be caught up n the same illumination, and for there to be no place for them to hide, or even half-hide."

    - Jean Genet

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


  • " The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster."

    - Oscar Wilde

    Source: http://theatre.usc.edu/whatistheatre


  • " Never get caught acting."

    - Lillian Gish

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much."

    - John Wayne

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author--or some other author--to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well."

    - George Bernard Shaw

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " If you achieve success, you will get applause. Enjoy it--but never quite believe it."

    - Robert Montgomery

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " Don't use your conscious past, use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little."

    - Stella Adler

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " It is a great help for a man to be in love with himself. For an actor, however, it is absolutely essential."

    - Robert Morley

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

    - George Burns

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is fifty percent of the performance."

    - Shirley Booth

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " Lead the audience by the nose to the thought."

    - Laurence Olivier

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " Walk in, plant yourself, look the other person in the eye, and tell the truth."

    - James Cagney

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " What acting means is that you've got to get out of your own skin."

    - Katherine Hepburn

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman."

    - Tallulah Bankhead

    Source: Tallulah: My Autobiography


  • " Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are."

    - Marlon Brando

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur


  • " To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life."

    - Albert Finney

    Source: Friendly Advice by Jon Winokur