Quotes About Theatre

When I first decided to take off the tap shoes and concentrate on theatre directing, Dominic Dromgoole got in touch to ask if I'd like to do something with Oxford Stage Company. My reaction was negative.

My generation of playwrights have grown up writing for studio theatres, and so the task of writing for more than ten or so actors is a huge challenge. Logistically, it's like doing an enormous Sudoku. Making sure everyone is in the right place at the right time in the right order instantly sends me into a cold sweat.

Theatre has been a sort of hobby. I regret that I am not active, but given my job that is difficult. But those were learning days. The learning curve was the level of confidence, maturity, and reflexes that theatre teaches you is fantastic. You are alone in front of an audience for two hours and that gives you a different kind of confidence.

Lyceum Theatre. The reviewer for the Times noted that the redskins had been "greatly scared at its horror" as they watched the show unfold from their boxes. Henry Irving played Mephistopheles,

The truth of cinematography cannot be the truth of theatre, not the truth of the novel, nor the truth of painting. (What the cinematographer captures with his or her own resources cannot be what the theatre, the novel, painting capture with theirs).

It's cold out there, colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night.

Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.

A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has warned that if terrorism is rewarded in the Middle East, it will "be coming to a theatre near you.

The eternal cycle, the beginning, middle and end of a human being, the incomprehensible dance in the magic of our own theatre will continue forever. But ignorance of our birth and death makes us largely mad; the majority of us clap at our disasters as though they are a play: but it is a work we cannot possibly understand.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.

The good die young but not always. The wicked prevail but not consistently. I am confused by life, and I feel safe within the confines of the theatre.

I am extraordinarily lucky, I was born in a family of strong moral values, and in my life I was able to do what I liked best: debuts, great theatres, but above all, inner and deep satisfaction.

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

What's important about an actor is his acting, not his life.

This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.

In much postmodern theatre ... the line between theatre and non-theatre is deliberately erased.

There are three things you can never have enough of in life, Lieutenant: chocolate, friends and the theatre.

It was a long time since I had been in a theatre. And I would not have come now had Pat not wanted it. Theatres, concerts, books—all these middle-class habits I had almost lost. It was not the time for them. Politics provided theatre enough—the shootings every night made another concert—and the gigantic book of poverty was more impressive than any library.

One of the major differences between ritual and theatre is that in ritual one communicates with the gods whereas in theatre communication is established with a human audience

It is generally accepted that theatre developed from ritual, whose function was to reach an accommodation with powerful forces or gods without whose aid life would be intolerable

Not simply every number is tuneful, as in, say, The Boys From Syracuse. Not even every number exhilarates character, as in My Fair Lady. Rather: every number makes the experience so vivid that we are reminded that music theatre is our highest—our most complete—art.

Jane Eyre, Thou Shalt Not, and Thoroughly Modern Millie typify currents running through the musical today: one, the extra-musical musical play that encroaches on opera; two, the rehabilitation of dance after years of neglect; and, three, the musical-comedy revival.