Selected theater quotes

1. Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.

2. The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother. The worst is exploiting and wallowing in the self-pity of adolescence and obsessive keyhole sexuality. The way out, as the poet says, is always through.

3. The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.

4. I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

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

6. It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.

7. We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.

8. Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.

9. He played the King as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace.

10. Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game.

11. The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

12. From the American retelling of Romeo and Juliet in West Side Story to the Japanese adaptation of King Lear in Ran, Shakespeare's cultural influence is virtually limitless.

13. An actress always knows when she's hit it and mostly you haven't; but once or twice I think I hit it right, so maybe that's good enough for one life.

14. As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree.

15. We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves.

16. I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy, will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.

17. And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry, Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

18. Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, Or the tale of Troy divine.

19. A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

20. When you've seen all of Ionesco's plays, I felt at the end, you've seen one of them.

21. A good many inconveniences attend playgoing in any large city, but the greatest of them is usually the play itself.

22. No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.

23. Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.

24. Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

25. It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.

26. The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.

27. My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

28. Well, all the plays that I was trying to write : were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

29. The Crucible became by far my most frequently produced play, both abroad and at home. Its meaning is somewhat different in different places and moments. I can almost tell what the political situation in a country is when the play is suddenly a hit there - it is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just past.

30. A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance - you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.

31. In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks ... on screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera. The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes. It isn't easy to do in the theater, but it's twice as hard in film.

32. I was very moved by that play once again when the Royal Shakespeare Company did a production that toured the cathedrals of England. Then they took it to Poland and performed it in the cathedrals there, too. The actors said it changed their lives. Officials wept; they were speechless after the play, and everyone knew why. It was because they had to enforce the kind of repression the play was attacking. That made me prouder than anything I ever did in my life. The mission of the theater, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.

33. 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.

34. It is difficult to live up to one's posters:When I pass my name in such large letters I blush, but at the same time instinctively raise my hat.

35. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.

36. The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt That must, as if it had not holy blood Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud, Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theatre business, management of men. I swear before the dawn comes round again I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

37. The producer. This is a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

38. Through all the drama-whether damned or not- Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.

39. John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre - a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.

40. Of all the bete, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, that thing last night beat - as far as the acting and story went - and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tuneless and scrannelpipiest - tongs and boniest - doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound - not excepting railway whistles - as I was by the cessation of the cobbler's bellowing.

41. I get onstage now with more attitude at fifty-seven than I had when I was twenty. When I was twenty, my attitude was kind of like, 'Yeah, yeah:I'm a big rock star.' Now, when I get onstage, I go up there, and I am the Moriarty of rock. I am the consummate villain. I am the Hannibal Lector of rock, and I play it like that. Alice just seems like an arrogant bastard or villain who is making the audience feel as though they are lucky to be there when in reality that is exactly the opposite of my personality. With Alice though:it is great to play him or portray him as an Alan Rickman type character who is very condescending. That's what makes him fun to watch - he's Captain Hook.

42. Arthur was the last of the three great theatrical voices of the American century - O'Neill, Williams, Miller. ... Arthur's special achievement was to make political and social plays which belonged on Broadway and yet were also powered to reach out into America and way beyond.

43. 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. That's great art - Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art - nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.

44. There is nothing so interesting on stage than a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelaces.

45. If all people want is to see something they understand, they shouldn't go to the theater. They should go to the bathroom.

46. Performance number 1,000, if I play it that long, will take place in a well-padded booby-hatch.

47. [On being asked if he freaked out in the theatre when he saw The Ring] Yes I did. I was by myself and there was this guy with his girlfriend and a couple of other girls next to me - and they were right next to me, so I was pretty much in his lap the whole time. Lucky for me, he was nice!

48. I've started painting much more freely, and faster. I think it's working in the theatre that did it. You know what the Glyndebourne scene-painters said about my The Magic Flute? They said they had to wear sunglasses to paint it.

49. For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?

50. This stage, if it hasn't already, probably will see a production of the Vagina Monologues. Which I cannot wait to see, because it sounds so fabulously fucking stupid. Everybody knows that if female genitalia could speak, it would sound exactly like Enya.

51. We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the production. The constant changes of scene which, incidentally, seem the sign of a decadent art rather than one which is progressing, were shown by placards with the inscription: 'A Forest,' 'A Prison,' and so on. Within this conventional setting the onlooker's imagination was free to follow the actions of the various characters who were animated by passions drawn from nature, and that was enough for him. So-called innovations are gratefully seized on as an excuse for poverty of invention and in the same way, the long descriptive passages that so overburden modern novels are a sign of sterility, for it is obviously easier to describe a dress or the outward appearance of an object than to trace the subtle development of a character or portray the emotions of the heart.

52. Me? I play Gene Kelly...It's a guy who produces, directs, sings, and dances. who else could it be but Kelly.?

53. 'And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present the famous escape artists, Krafty Kralefsky and his partner, Slithery Stephanides.' 'Dear God,' said Larry, 'who thought of those names?'

54. I had recklessly dared to do what I wouldn't dare to do today. The knight performs his morning prayer. When he is ready to pack up his chess set, he turns around, and there stands Death. 'Who are you?' asks the knight. 'I am Death.' Bengt Ekerot and I agreed that Death should have the features of a white clown. An amalgamation of a clown mask and a skull. It was a delicate and dangerous artistic move, which could have failed. Suddenly, an actor appears in whiteface, dressed all in black, and announces that he is Death. Everyone accepted the dramatic feat that he was Death, instead of saying, 'Come on now, don't try to put something over us! You can't fool us! We can see that you are just a talented actor who is painted white and clad in black! You're not Death at all!' But nobody protested. That made me feel triumphant and joyous.

55. Sir - As a playgoer of forty years standing, may I say that I heartily agree with Peter Pinnell in his condemnation of 'Entertaining Mr Sloane'. I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion. And to be told that such a disgusting piece of filth now passes for humour! Today's young playwrights take it upon themselves to flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people. I hope that the ordinary decent people of this country will shortly strike back! Yours truly, Edna Welthorpe (Mrs)

56. We wondered why we ever thought there was, during the Cold War, any serious danger of Russia conquering the world when they couldn't even deliver the scenery for The Tempest.

57. 'I wanted to experiment with that live energy, to push myself a little. It's very much about having intimacy with the music. I love theater - and I love playing in these old theaters. It's not a Vegas stage show. It's very much just me and the music and a five-piece band and a 20-piece string section from each city.'

58. I believe in neither a director's nor a writer's theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences. I count myself as a member of an intelligent audience, and I wrote to you as such. That you should disagree with me I can understand, but that you should resent my expressing my opinions is something that frankly amazes me. I thought we had outgrown the idea of theatre as a mystic rite born of secret communion between author, director, actors and an empty auditorium.

59. What Elizabethan playwrights learned from the Greek classics was not theories of insanity, but dramatic practice - that is, madness is a dandy theatrical element. It focuses the audience's attention and increases suspense, since you never know what a mad person may get up to next; and Shakespeare himself makes use of it in many forms. In King Lear, there's a scene in which one man pretending to be mad, another who has really gone mad, and a third who has probably always been a little addled, are brought together for purposes of comparison, irony, pathos, and tour de force acting. In Hamlet, there are two variations - Hamlet himself, who assumes madness, and Ophelia, who really does go winsomely bonkers. In MacBeth, it's Lady MacBeth who snaps.

60. You can sit there and have a universal experience, of fear, of anger, of tears, of love, and I discovered that its the audience, really, that is doing the acting.

61. When the curtain came down at the Ethel Barrymore theater on Dec. 3, 1947, our standards for performance, our expectations of what an actor should offer us in the way of psychological truth and behavioral honesty, were forever changed.

62. I fell in love with the whole ritual. The lights going down, the curtain going up, telling a story to a large group of people in the dark. It was one of those moments where you think, 'I can do that.' You're in control on stage. And I love telling the whole story in one fell swoop. With movies, you never think, 'I nailed it.' In theater you get to go back and do it again, which to me is much more satisfying.

63. This theatre is your theatre. You are responsible for its creation and its progress.

64. I was thinking in the cab on the way here that when I did press for the original production it felt like this was what I've always dreamt of - to be talking about myself, and about a play that I've written, and to be photographed. It was what I wanted. Now it's just part of the job.

65. Oh, I hate the thought of all those costumes and grease paint! When I think that characters like Kundry will now have to be dressed up, those dreadful artists' balls immediately spring into my mind. Having created the invisible orchestra, I now feel like inventing the invisible theatre!

66. (As a Shakespearean Narrator) Mind not my words - Let the PLAY be the thing. I'll get back forth and touch myself, anon.

67. Things you don't hear at the Tonys (Broadway Award Show), 'Don't wait up kids'.

68. His [David Garrick's] death has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

69. I'll come no more behind your scenes, David [Garrick]; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.

70. Without question, Steve is the best Broadway lyricist, past or present.

71. For what's a play without a woman in it?

72. The world's a stage on which all parts are played.

73. I hate plays. I've never seen the point of paying money to watch people shout a lot and pretend to die, and now that I'm the father of three young children I don't have to.

74. When Harold Pinter was lobbying to have London's Comedy Theatre renamed the Pinter Theatre, Stoppard wrote back: 'Have you thought, instead, of changing your name to Harold Comedy?'

75. 'Tonight, in this very ring...'

76. 'Blessed be the name of Vincent Kennedy McMahon!'

77. Not that there weren't real communists in the labor unions, and real spies in Washington, but these had nothing to do with the show that was being put on for us, which seemed entirely designed to Make Us Take This Thing Seriously. From abroad, where I was for much of the time, it looked as if the United States were trying to act like a superpower by holding its very own show trials.

78. All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear, That's Ophelia, that Cordelia.

79. A play is a world, with its own inhabitants and its own laws and its values.

80. I loved the theaters, and even though I was hungry, I never spent money for food.

81. Each play worth seeing should be watched a second time on the faces of the audience.

82. Form is a theatrical event of a certain length, and the length itself may be unpredictable.

83. Sir - In finding so much to praise in 'Entertaining Mr. Sloane,' which seems to be nothing more than a highly sensationalized, lurid, crude and over-dramatised picture of life at its lowest, surely your dramatic critic has taken leave of his senses. The effect this nauseating work had on me was to make we want to fill my lungs with some fresh, wholesome Leicester Square air. A distinguished critic, if I quote him correctly, felt the sensation of snakes crawling around his ankles while watching it. Yours truly, Peter Pinnell

84. I saw The Lonely Guy all by myself. It was one of those Saturday afternoons where the snow is coming down gray and mean, and you can't even get a decent recorded message on the answering machines of strangers ... 'Good luck,' an usher told me. 'You're going to need it.' He was right ... The Lonely Guy is the kind of movie that seems to have been made to play in empty theaters on overcast January afternoons ... [It] is the kind of movie that inspires you to distract yourself by counting the commercial products visible on the screen, and speculating about whether their manufacturers paid fees to have them worked into the movie. I counted two Diet 7-Ups, two Tabs, and Steve Martin.

85. (performing his dancing moves) Now, you move very delicately, do a little bit of a flutter kick, now, what that is I lift up my right leg and kind of flutter it at the judges, then I do a little spin, I lay out and show the blouse, press my lips, squint my eyes, spin and turn. Now, I do what's called 'Working the Pants.'

86. Play me no plays.

87. Fields reloading!

88. In the closing scene of Wagner's Lohengrin, Slezak had sung his Farewell, and was about to make his departure in the boat drawn by a swan. The boat moved away before Slezak could step on board. He glanced at the audience. 'Tell me,' he said, 'what time is the next swan?'

89. West Side Story

90. Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher.

91. Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.

92. The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.

93. Or if it's Shakespeare in the West End, then it's moody lighting, three old people saying, 'When shall we three meet again? Tuesday? Okay.'

94. Shaw's relations with women have always been gallant, coy even. The number he has surrendered to physically have been few - perhaps not half a dozen in all - the first man to have cut a path through the theatre and left it strewn with virgins.

95. 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.

96. Bob Hope: By the way, this is where Bing did his last show and I think they've done very nicely. They've gotten most of it out of the curtains.

97. We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.

98. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple.

99. In conversation with Mona Bismarck and Gore Vidal, 'Mona said, 'Did you see Gore's new play The Best Man when you were in New York?' 'Of course not.'...'Don't like plays, only shows.' He meant musical comedies.' (Vidal, Palimpsest, 206)

100. I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.