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 181 - 200 of 425
  • " Stage lighting is no longer a matter of simple illumination as it was less than 100 years ago. Today, the lighting designer is expected to be a master of art, science, history, psychology, communications, politics and sometimes even mind reading."

    - Bill Williams

    Source: http://www.mts.net/%7Ewilliam5/sld/sld-100.htm


  • " The dramatist's function is (1) to earn a living for his family and himself and (2) to try to entertain people for a few hours."

    - Lee Adams

    Source: Playwrights, Composers, Lyricists on Theater


  • " Young actors, fear your admirers! Learn in time, from your first steps, to hear, understand and love the cruel truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth and talk of your art only with those who can tell you the truth."

    - Konstantin Stanislavsky

    Source: http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/acting_t004.htm


  • " A fool cannot be an actor, though an actor may act a fool's part."

    - Sophocles

    Source: http://www.giga-usa.com/quotes/topics/acting_t003.htm


  • " The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting."

    - Sanford Meisner

    Source: http://www.aldersonstudio.com/quotes/index.html


  • " You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done."

    - Sanford Meisner

    Source: http://www.aldersonstudio.com/quotes/index.html


  • " The only way to deal with yourself as an actor is to follow the emotional truth of what you have to do under the imaginary circumstances. And as you develop you become confident. You come to believe in what you're doing and trust it because it's out of you."

    - Sanford Meisner

    Source: http://www.aldersonstudio.com/quotes/index.html


  • " If you have the emotion, it infects you and the audience. If you don't have it don't bother; just say your lines as truthfully as you are capable of doing. You can't fake emotion."

    - Sanford Meisner

    Source: http://www.aldersonstudio.com/quotes/index.html


  • " I didn't like the play. But I saw it under unfavorable circumstances -- the curtains were up."

    - Groucho Marx

    Source: http://www.ag.wastholm.net/category/art


  • " If I wanted to have people tell me what to do, I would have become an actor."

    - Rob Hudd

    Source: http://www.denagy.com/techiejokes/tjokes.html


  • " If we could read minds, we wouldn't need headsets."

    - Tommy Kendrick

    Source: http://www.denagy.com/techiejokes/tjokes.html


  • " The stage play is a trial, not a deed of violence. The soul is opened, like the combination of a safe, by means of a word. You don't require an acetylene torch."

    - Jean Giradoux

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents"

    - Alec Guinness

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " Playwrights must be allowed to be at less than their best sometimes, without meeting an all-out critical assault."

    - Peter Hall

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " There are two kinds of theatre, good and bad. Much as I should like to see theatre in America, I would rather have no theatre than bad theatre. What we must strive for is perfection and come as close to it as is humanly possible"

    - Margot Jones

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " If no single reason can fully account for the lack of great work on Broadway these days, there is a factor in the discussion that is rarely mentioned but which has a bearing on what gets produced: the audience. . . It's not audience intelligence that has waned; it's audience passion -- the pro forma Broadway standing ovation now springs from duty not desire.... If that passion exists more in the audience for The Lord of the Rings than for contemporary Broadway musicals, well, at least it is alive somewhere. (2003)"

    - Brendan Lemon

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " Acting is an everlasting search for truth."

    - Laurence Olivier

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays--to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash."

    - Harold Pinter

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic."

    - George Bernard Shaw

    Source: http://www.curtainup.com/quotepro.html


  • " Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results."

    - Lee Strasberg