THEATRE QUOTES II
quotations about theatre
From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.
BERTOLT BRECHT
A Short Organum for the Theatre
Theatre is a way of showing us lives far beyond our own experience; but it lets us into those stories by reflecting our own lives.
MARK SHENTON
"Theatre diversity is blossoming, even if there are a few bad apples", The Stage, May 24, 2017
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least.
EUGENE IONESCO
Notes and Counter Notes
It's dwindled somewhat, because of money, because of changes in social attitudes, because of education. I don't think we have as much theatre in schools as we used to. If children aren't exposed to live theatre at a young age, it's not something that becomes part of their psyche.
MARK HADLOW
"Actor Mark Hadlow appointed officer of New Zealand Order of Merit", Stuff, June 5, 2017
The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted.... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do.
HAROLD PINTER
interview, The Paris Review, fall 1966
The fixation of the theater in one language--written words, music, lights, noises--betokens its imminent ruin.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
preface, The Theater and Its Double
Theatre is a powerful art form, it teaches lessons about life, society and emotion and more importantly yourself.
ANASTASIA ROBERTS
"Theatre takes student to Beijing", Wairarapa Times-Age, June 2, 2017
I long for the simplicity of theatre. I want lessons learned, comeuppances delivered, people sorted out, all before your bladder gets distractingly full. That's what I want. What I know is what we all know, whether we'll admit it or not: every attempt to impose the roundness of a well-made play on reality produces a disaster. Life just isn't so, nor will it be made so.
JOHN M. FORD
Casting Fortune
The play was a great success, but the audience was a failure.
OSCAR WILDE
attributed, Encore
Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Misérables
What I have always found most beautiful in the theatre, in my childhood, and still today, is lustre--a beautiful object, luminous, crystalline, complex, circular, symmetrical. However, I do not absolutely deny the value of dramatic literature. Only, I should like the actors to be mounted on high pattens, to wear masks more expressive than the human face, and to speak through megaphones.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
For all its flaws and demands, for all its stupidities, the theater will outlive all the mechanical contraptions schemed to ape it.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD
Tallulah: My Autobiography
The theater is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of the imagination, not the other way around. The theater is an event, not an object. Theatre workers need not blush and conceal their desperate struggle to pay the landlords their rents. Theater without the stink of art.
CHARLES LUDLAM
The Complete Plays of Charles Ludlam
No, no, no; the theatre is not a house of evil repute, nor are its followers evil doers: the theatre is a temple where the beautiful is always worshipped; it makes a continuous appeal to the higher senses and natural passions. In this temple vice is punished, and virtue rewarded; the great social problems are presented. In this temple instruction is less abstract, and, therefore, more profitable for the crowd. The apostles of this temple are full of faith and courage; they have the souls of missionaries marching always toward the ideal.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
TOM STOPPARD
interview, March 10, 1999
The theater is a great equalizer: it is the only place where the poor can look down on the rich.
WILL ROGERS
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
Participation in the creative processes of theatre is the best way to reveal the human being, and through this to understand one's self and one's society.
FRANCES BABBAGE
Augusto Boal
Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramatic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurrences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, political intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.
E. A. BUCCHIANERI
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
There are those who go to the theatre as they would go to a brothel.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Collected Works
A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
La Parodie, L'Invasion