Quotes About Theatre

The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary.

Sans un élément de cruauté à la base de tout spectacle, le théâtre n'est pas possible.

Nous ne sommes pas libres. Et le ciel peut encore nous tomber sur la tête. Et le théâtre est fait pour nous apprendre d'abord cela

The theatre will never find itself again except by furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior. […] If theatre wants to find itself needed once more, it must present everything in love, crime, war and madness.

Tragedy, however, is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear.

the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet.

The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. III

Mencionou cinco filmes que merecem ser vistos. Impossível. Houve tempo em que podia ir sozinha ao cinema, ou mesmo ao Teatro. É que não estava só. Havia em mim e à minha volta a sua presença. Agora, quando estou só, digo-me: - Estou só. - E tenho medo.

The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

I must be the only playwright this century to have been pursued up a London street by an angry mob. LIke most battle experiences, my own view was limited by my vantage point at the back of the stalls. There was an inescapable tension in the house. The theatre itself took on a feeling of rococo mockery and devilment, too hot, a snake-pit of stabbing jewellery, hair-pieces, hobbling high heels, stifling wraps and unmanageable long frocks.

Imagine Love Story retold by a theatre group for the dramatically challenged.

In the theatre the playwright is at least the equal partner of the performers, but in film the writer is shouldered aside by director, actor, producer and editor, who together transform the printed word into something far more glamorous and evocative.

In the dark recesses of a porter's lodge, beneath the tiles of an attic roof, many a poor girl dreams, on returning from the theatre, of pearls and diamonds, gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles; she fancies herself adored, applauded, courted; but little she knows of that treadmill life, in which the actress is forced to rehearsals under pain of fines, to the reading of new pieces, to the constant study of new roles.

The author writes a play, then is through with it, aside from collecting royalties. Four weeks of rehearsing and the director's work is done. Theirs are creative jobs. But how would the author feel if he had to write the same play over each night for a year? Or the director to restage it before each performance? They'd be as balmy as Nijinsky in a week. Even the ushers traffic with different people every night. But the actress? She's a caged parrot.

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.

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.

I don't want actors reasoning with me about 'motivation' and all that bull.

I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.

I don't think people should be priced out of going to the theatre... But we have to recognise that it is a show business.

In films, there is no scope to rectify any mistake... but in theatre, you can rectify it the next day.

My first job was at the BBC but was really dull. I was working in the BBC's reference department, where I did a lot of filing. I had always been interested in films and theatre, so I thought that getting a job at the BBC would be a good idea, but the job was really mundane.

I was doing theatre when somebody noticed me and referred me to Raju Hirani. And Raju saw me on camera, and there, I was a heavy guy with long hair. But I got selected for the role of Joy in '3 Idiots.'