John Lahr Quotes

Quotes about:

• We live in a time of terror, and contrary to what we see on television and allow ourselves to believe, the real goal of terror is not to kill people but to kill thought; to so demoralize a society that it implodes from within.

  John Lahr

  Real, Believe, People

  "Questions for John Lahr". www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

  10 Copy quote

• Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world.

  John Lahr

  Pain, Thinking, Play

  "Questions for John Lahr" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

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• Entertainment is not politically neutral.

  John Lahr

  Entertainment

  John Lahr (1982). “Coward, the Playwright”, p.103, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

• Nobody has ever gone broke selling escape to the American public.

  John Lahr

  Gone, Selling, Broke

  "Master of Revels". www.newyorker.com. May 3, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• A cruel critic has never made anything; his glibness is a way of inflicting his emptiness on others.

  John Lahr

  Criticism, Way, Emptiness

  "Questions for John Lahr". www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• Criticism is a life without risk.

  John Lahr

  Risk, Criticism

  "Questions for John Lahr". www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

  8 Copy quote

• Like the tail fins on fifties American cars or the parabolic shapes of Populuxe furniture, 'West Side Story' incarnates the dream of momentum in the golden age of the twentieth century.

  John Lahr

  Dream, Car, Age

  "Turf Wars". www.newyorker.com. March 30, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.

  John Lahr

  Book, Artist, Theatre

  6 Copy quote

• The British playwright Nina Raine is one of her generation's most promising talents.

  John Lahr

  Generations, Talent, British

  4 Copy quote

• Identity is memory; when memory disappears, the self dissolves and love with it.

  John Lahr

  Memories, Self, Identity

  John Lahr (2015). “Joy Ride: Lives of the Theatricals”, p.167, Bloomsbury Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• His life was one long extravaganza, like living inside a Faberge egg.

  John Lahr

  Eggs, Long

  8 Copy quote

• Death of a Salesman' is a brilliant taxonomy of the spiritual atrophy of mid-twentieth-century white America.

  John Lahr

  Spiritual, White, America

  "Hard Sell" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. May 25, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• I detest literature. I abominate the theatre. I have a horror of culture. I am only interested in magic!

  John Lahr

  Magic, Theatre, Culture

  Kenneth Tynan, John Lahr (2002). “The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan”, p.21, A&C Black

  4 Copy quote

• Momentum was part of the exhilaration and the exhaustion of the twentieth century which Coward decoded for the British but borrowed wholesale from the Americans.

  John Lahr

  Coward, Momentum, Exhilaration

  4 Copy quote

• I go to the theatre expecting to have a good time. I want each play and performance to take me somewhere. Naturally, this doesn't always happen.

  John Lahr

  Play, Theatre, Want

  "Questions for John Lahr". www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• Frivolity is the species' refusal to suffer.

  John Lahr

  Suffering, Refusal, Species

  4 Copy quote

• Did you come of age in those sweet summers of the early nineteen-sixties, when the airwaves were full of rock and roll's doo-wop promise of joy and the nation was full of J.F.K.'s eloquent promise of a New Frontier? I did. Life seemed to be laid out before us like a banquet; everything was for the taking, especially hearts.

  John Lahr

  Summer, Sweet, Heart

  7 Copy quote

• We were postwar middle-class white kids living in the slipstream of the greatest per-capita rise in income in the history of Western civilization; we were 'teen-agers' - a term, coined in 1941, that was in common usage a decade later - a new, recognizable franchise. We had money, mobility, and problems all our own.

  John Lahr

  Kids, Civilization, Class

  "Can’t Stop the Beat" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. October 26, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• Most of the people dishing out judgment have no working experience of the theatre, have not written a professional play, a sketch, or even a joke; have never worked in a theatre, taken an acting class, or published any extended piece of work. They are creative virgins; everything they know about theatre is book-learned and second-hand.

  John Lahr

  Taken, Book, Class

  "Questions for John Lahr" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• Theatre people, who are an adaptive species, know that to remain sane in the process of production where everyone and his uncle has an opinion about how to fix a show, you must pick the people whose knowledge and taste you trust and stick only to these few. The Tweetocracy is no place to look.

  John Lahr

  Uncles, People, Theatre

  7 Copy quote

• First and foremost, I'd say my father, Bert Lahr ... gave me a love of theatre--its kinetic and emotional potential and its raffish backstage fun--and also set an artistic example of the importance of corrupting an audience with pleasure.

  John Lahr

  Fun, Father, Emotional

  4 Copy quote

• I know in an existential sense that life can change on a dime ... something has instantly and inexorably changed in American life.

  John Lahr

  Dimes, Existential, Changed

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• Questions about political theatre always overlook America's most powerful and effective political theatre, which is always thriving: the American musical. The politics is conservative but, to my mind, effective and insidious.

  John Lahr

  Powerful, America, Political

  "Questions for John Lahr" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• The history of theatre is the history of first nights.

  John Lahr

  Night, Theatre, Firsts

  John Lahr (2013). “Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton”, p.250, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• In 1957, “West Side Story” had introduced the musical to the reckless dark side of teen-age life; “Bye Bye Birdie,” set in Sweet Apple, Ohio, where the citizens apparently dress mostly in chartreuse, mauve, orange, periwinkle, and turquoise, was a walk on the bright side.

  John Lahr

  Goodbye, Sweet, Dark

  "Can’t Stop the Beat" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. October 26, 2009.

  54 Copy quote

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