Theatre Quotes - Page 32

• Plays by Alan Ayckbourn have been attracting larger audiences in the regional theatres than those of Shakespeare.

  Alan Ayckbourn

  Play, Audience, Has Beens

  Press Release by the Arts Council of Great Britain, November 02, 1983.

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• Theatre supposes lives that are poor and agitated, a people searching in dreams for a refuge from thought. If we were happier and freer we should not feel hungry for theatre. A people that is happy and free has need of festivities more than of theatres; it will always see in itself the finest spectacle.

  Romain Rolland

  Dream, People, Needs

  "Le Théâtre du peuple". Book by Romain Rolland, 1903.

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• The landscape, like Los Angeles itself, is transitional. Impermanence haunts the city, with its mushroom industries--the aircraft perpetually becoming obsolete, the oil which must one day be exhausted, the movies which fill America's theatres for six months and are forgotten. Many of its houses--especially the grander ones--have a curiously disturbing atmosphere, a kind of psychological dankness which smells of anxiety, overdrafts, uneasy lust, whisky, divorce and lies.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Lying, Divorce, Cities

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• There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made.

  Edward Albee

  Play, People, Cafes

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• The condition of the theater is always an accurate measure of the cultural health of a nation. A play always exists in the present tense (if it is a valuable one), and its music -- its special noise -- is always contemporary. The most valuable function of the theater as an art form is to tell us who we are, and the health of the theater is determined by how much of that we want to know.

  Edward Albee

  Art, Play, Special

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.63, Da Capo Press

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• 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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• 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.

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• Pass the popcorn, please. Life is a film, theatre, a theatre of the soul. We play different roles on different stages. At death, we walk offstage. At birth, we walk onstage.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Buddhism, Play

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• But then I got a job selling coffee at the York Theatre, and when I met theatre people, something clicked. I felt comfortable with them; I felt like myself. I decided to go to drama school based just on that feeling. I had never done any acting.

  Janet McTeer

  Jobs, Drama, Coffee

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.

  Sylvester McCoy

  Play, Hull, Stories

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• I quite enjoy fame, especially when you go to conventions in America where they treat you like a god with stretch limos and the whole fame thing, but then when you come back to Britain, you end up changing in a toilet in a theatre off West End and that's really good, because that is what it's about.

  Sylvester McCoy

  America, Limos, Toilets

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• As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.

  Gavin Bryars

  Art, Writing, College

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• As a kid who wasn't into sports, at school I felt almost alienated at times, whereas in the theatre community there was this amazing sense of camaraderie. Early on, we would go to rehearsals with my dad and I was like the mascot for the backstage crew. That was a big part of my childhood, so I dreamed of one day doing a play in London.

  Zach Braff

  Sports, Dad, School

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• Is she perverted like me? Would she go down on you in a theatre?

  Alanis Morissette

  Quality, Like Me

  "You Oughta Know" (song) (1995)

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• Feelings are universal, and if an actor's doing his job, I think he's making people sit there, and if it's in a movie or a theatre, going 'Hmm, yeah, I know that... I know that.

  Jeffrey Combs

  Jobs, Thinking, People

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• My family were broadminded enough to support me when I wanted to pursue a life in the theatre.

  Peter Gallagher

  Support, My Family, Enough

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• When I'm doing theatre, I feel like my life's on hold. Even though you might go out for a coffee, or go and see a film, your brain is still there, pulling you back to it.

  Shirley Henderson

  Coffee, Brain, Might

  "Shirley Henderson: I'm every woman" by Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2011.

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• I've gotten to go wonderful places, meet interesting and intelligent people, and I started of course in the theatre and continue to work in the theatre where there is some intelligence involved in it.

  Jeffrey Jones

  Intelligent, People, Interesting

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• I've played a lot of roles I haven't wanted to play, either because they needed someone in the theatre or because they couldn't do it without me 'cause they don't have anyone else the right age.

  John Mahoney

  Play, Age, Causes

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• I grew up overseas in Indonesia, and my school had a great art, music, and theatre program.

  Angela Kinsey

  Art, School, Program

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• When I was at drama school I wanted to do classical theatre. It just so happened that I did a film when I came out and I moved that way.

  Andrew Lincoln

  Drama, School, Way

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Musical theatre is something I'm familiar with, I've been doing that.

  David Naughton

  Musical, Musical Theatre, Familiar

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• I studied at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano: I was a theatre actor.

  Franco Nero

  Actors, Theatre Actors

  "Franco Nero: No escaping Django". Interview with Phelim O'Neil, www.theguardian.com. May 26, 2011.

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• When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.

  Ivor Novello

  Ordinary, Firsts, Appearance

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• I have a dialect myself; it's more pronounced, because I have studied theatre and been in England. It's half-British, half-Indian.

  Kunal Nayyar

  Dialect, Half, England

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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