Quotes About Theater

William Shakespeare

I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses' vein.

Alas, poor Yorick I knew him Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...

All the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players;

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying Nothing.

The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.

With a play, when the curtain goes up and people are in garbage cans, I know I may admire the idea cerebrally, but it won't mean as much to me. I've seen Beckett, along with many lesser avant-gardists, and many contemporary plays, and I can say yes, that's clever and deep but I don't really care. But when I watch Chekhov or O'Neill--where it's men and women in human, classic crises--that I like.

Given the consistency and dimensions of his exaltation of flops, it has remained a puzzle on par with string theory how he manages to raise money for each fresh theatrical holocaust.

At the opera in Milan with my daughter and me, Needleman leaned out of his box and fell into the orchestra pit. Too proud to admit it was a mistake, he attended the opera every night for a month and repeated it each time.

Een bed ziet ons geboren worden en ziet ons doodgaan; het is een wisselend toneel waar het mensdom beurtelings boeiende drama's, lachwekkende kluchten en afschuwelijke treurspelen opvoer. - Het is een met bloemen versierde wieg; - het is de troon der liefde; - het is een graf.

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National, and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw, but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

I came from a family where I felt great pressure to be financially successful, and I felt that staying in Chicago and doing theater, I was, in all likelihood, not going to find financial success.

To quote a Shakespearean cliché, repeated to death because it is so stubbornly true: "All the world's a stage." Work is theater. The place where life unfolds to our tragic or comic satisfaction.

Dreams are like drama, they unfold the story on the stage.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

Listen to that--just listen to that. It puffs, it pants, it wheezes, it yanks its damn carcass up step by step--who'd ever believe that on stage it's a young girl.

what the play is about Supertask Break the play down into its component parts Bits Decide what each actor has to do in each of the component parts, what does he want or need Tasks Decide on what he does to fulfil that need Actions Check whether the sequence of needs and actions is logical and coherent and

Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?

Real acting is never personal.

A tragedy need not have blood and death it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.

A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.