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Theatre Quotes

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Displaying 41 - 60 of 425
  • " You have to think about the big speeches in Shakespeare as the most important things the character has ever said; they need to be spoken with your chest cut open, your heart bare, and with tremendous passion. You need to tear the words from the sky. If you don't feel like you've run a marathon when you're done, you're not doing it right. It takes courage to open yourself up to an audience like that, letting them see your insides without desperately trying to show them--it takes practice."

    - Ben Crystal

    Source: author of Shakespeare on Toast


  • " When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part."

    - Olivier Laurence

    Source: Laurence Olivier


  • " The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good - in spite of all the people who say he is very good."

    - Robert Graves

    Source: Robert Graves (1895 - 1985)


  • " Brush up your Shakespeare Start quoting him now Brush up your Shakespeare And the women you will wow"

    - Cole Porter

    Source: Kiss Me, Kate (musical)


  • " Lighting paperwork is a living thing, continually evolving throughout the production process until opening night."

    - Anne E. McMills

    Source: The Assistant Light Designer's Toolkit


  • " The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited."

    - Oscar Hammerstein


  • " I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it."

    - Oscar Hammerstein


  • " The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does."

    - David Rubenstein


  • " If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them."

    - Jeff Brooks


  • " Most giving is 80% emotion and 20 % rational. And the best way to get to someone's emotions is to tell a story."

    - Unknown


  • " Volunteers will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no volunteers."

    - Ken Wyman


  • " These performers that go on about their technique and craft - oh, puleeze! How boring! I don't know what 'technique' means. But I do know what experience is."

    - Elaine Stritch


  • " Audiences are not strangers to me. They're the best friends I've got in my life."

    - Elaine Stritch


  • " You cannot tell an audience a lie. They know it before you do; before it's out of your mouth, they know it's a lie."

    - Elaine Stritch


  • " You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny."

    - Elaine Stritch


  • " The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny."

    - Mike Nichols


  • " All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it."

    - Mike Nichols


  • " This ain't Chekhov, you know! [comment to cast during a rehearsal for "H.M.S. Pinafore"]"

    - Alan Stambusky


  • " Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself."

    - Tennessee Williams


  • " If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it."

    - Tennessee Williams