Quotes About Theater

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

Father Time is the make-up man responsible for the physical changes that determine the parts the average actor is to play.

In the theater the actor had uncertainty, broken promises, constant travel and a gypsy existence. In radio, if you were successful, there was an assured season of work. The show could not close if there was nobody in the balcony. There was no travel and the actor could enjoy a permanent home. There may have been other advantages but I didn't need to know them.

Der Mensch ist für mich ein Wesen, das nur durch paradoxe, komödiantische Mittel, Formen, dargestellt werden kann, denn der Mensch geht nicht auf wie eine Rechnung, und wo der Mensch so aufgeht, ist die Rechnung sicher gefälscht.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him.

The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance--all strewn with crumpled playbills.

The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance - all strewn with crumpled playbills.

I played Benedick in 'Much Ado About Nothing' nearly 30 years ago at the RSC, alongside Susan Fleetwood as Beatrice, and I loved every minute.

Thirty years ago dinner theatre used to be much more of a going concern than it is now.

I can always remember the dances, even from shows I did 40 years ago.

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.

I saw the Stones three years ago at the Wiltern Theater in L.A. and that was mind blowing.

Before I did any television or film, I did years and years of theater. Television and film stuff, even though it went on for a good, healthy number of years, almost felt like a diversion from theater.

I love Chicago, but in a lot of ways it's a disappointment. You can work there for years and years, and because you're in Chicago, you don't get the recognition. It has some of the best theater in the country, but when they shoot a movie there, they bring in all their actors.

You hand the baton on, and that's why roles like 'Medea' resonate for years and years, as each new actor comes to it.

People don't yell nasty things at actors - they let them continue.

Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.

There's nothing like the buzz of live theater. You put it out there and receive an instant reaction: laughing, crying, yelling, applauding.

When there is a pain-in-the-neck role for a girl to play, the directors start yelling 'Agnes.'

I have, I think to do a play a year is very good if you can afford the time and the energy because it's difficult to do, it's really the actors medium of course, because you're really out there and nobody's yelling cut so, yeah I have.

From the moment I saw 'Camelot' as a kid, the organic inclination of performing before a live audience is raw and visceral. Once you're out there, there's no yelling 'Cut!' or any such thing as a do-over because that moment has passed, and you're in it as it's happened and gone, sharing it with everyone.

I ushered at the Shubert in New Haven during graduate school when plays en route to Broadway still went out of town to try out. I worked backstage at summer stock doing jobs from garbage man to strapping on Herbert Marshall's wooden leg to fixing Gloria Swanson's broken plumbing in her dressing room with her yelling at me as I worked the plunger.

'Yellow Face' marks my summation of multiculturalism.