Quotes About Theater

I was occasionally getting calls for some things. But I would say, 22 to 29 was a lot of scuffling. Hoping to get called for bad wedding gigs and I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months.

I never cared who scored the goal, or which side won the silver cup. I never learned to bat or bowl; but I heard the curtain going up.

I often teach a graduate theater seminar on Greek tragedy in performance. I usually begin by saying that no matter what technological advances occur, the wisdom of these plays will never be obsolete.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

The opera isn't over till the fat lady sings.

If you want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, be an audience.

The humiliation of being in a poor play, of playing a shabby role, of appearing before disgruntled audiences, if any, of being curdled by hostile reviews, can outrage all human dignity. Being caught in a long-run success is almost as bad. The fearful monotony, the boredom of saying the same words every night, at the same minute, has unhinged the mind of more than one actress.

Once I achieved stardom, the whole apparatus of the theater palled on me.

In view of my scorn for the theater, its practices and delinquencies, why have I continued to act in it for thirty years? I have no alternate profession. Lobster-trapping? Placer-mining? Smuggling? I haven't the muscles, the equipment or the nerve.

In some ways grief anonymizes as powerfully as a Greek tragedy mask.

Would you like an interview for the drama, too?" "I can't act." "Everyone can act. We spend our lives acting.

I wanted to do Dreamgirls. If they're doing a stage production of Sparkle, I think that would be hot.

I always wanted to be an actress. And it wasn't ego. I felt so little about myself, considered myself such a sparrow. Not just my size. I thought I was so plain... I did plays not to show off but because if I did that - I didn't realize it at the time - I would be somebody other than this person I didn't really approve of.

She said, and I'm not kidding, 'Is this a speaking role?' I wasn't quite sure how to answer that one.

Visually speaking, nothing calls Shakespeare to mind like Hamlet holding Yorick's skull.

I'll ask you if you can play some speaking roles.

I'm always aware that there are, broadly speaking, two different ways to act: there is acting, and then there's being, and I'm always more interested in that.

Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.

I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I thought, in my naivete, I'd stay for the rest of my career. I'd thought I'd work up through the ranks and go from spear carrier - or in my case, the eunuch, which was several rungs below the spear carrier - to King Lear.

I auditioned for 'The Rainmaker.' Nothing. I auditioned for 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.' Nothing. 'Antigone' was my big break. I got a part as a Roman guard. I carried a spear.

I think when you take away all, like, the premieres and press stuff and all the special effects, then you just come down to the fact that it's all about acting, and I think that has been the best bit for me.

All the roles I've played have a very special place in my heart.

Developmental readings are actually the best part of being an actor for me. I once spent a month doing so many developmental readings at the Roundabout that we all joked that I was an 'artist in residence' there. But to me, it's such a special time to be involved with a new play.

Unless it's a specific accent, or something about physicality you have to change, I am generally not such a conscious actor.