THEATRE QUOTES II
quotations about theatre
The play was a great success, but the audience was a failure.
OSCAR WILDE
attributed, Encore
There are those who go to the theatre as they would go to a brothel.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Collected Works
The theater is a humble materialist enterprise which seeks to produce riches of the imagination, not the other way around. The theater is an event, not an object. Theatre workers need not blush and conceal their desperate struggle to pay the landlords their rents. Theater without the stink of art.
CHARLES LUDLAM
The Complete Plays of Charles Ludlam
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.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted.... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do.
HAROLD PINTER
interview, The Paris Review, fall 1966
From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.
BERTOLT BRECHT
A Short Organum for the Theatre
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.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
attributed, Profiles
The theater is a great equalizer: it is the only place where the poor can look down on the rich.
WILL ROGERS
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theatre, aside from any aesthetic value, may be considered as an institution for the treatment of the mass complex.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious
All theatre is political -- just as all other activities of human beings are political -- because theatre is not autonomous and must thus decide whose interests it serves.
FRANCES BABBAGE
Augusto Boal
The fixation of the theater in one language--written words, music, lights, noises--betokens its imminent ruin.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
preface, The Theater and Its Double
It's dwindled somewhat, because of money, because of changes in social attitudes, because of education. I don't think we have as much theatre in schools as we used to. If children aren't exposed to live theatre at a young age, it's not something that becomes part of their psyche.
MARK HADLOW
"Actor Mark Hadlow appointed officer of New Zealand Order of Merit", Stuff, June 5, 2017
Applause begets applause in the theatre, as laughter begets laughter and tears beget tears.
CLAYTON HAMILTON
Theory of the Theatre
Theatre is a powerful art form, it teaches lessons about life, society and emotion and more importantly yourself.
ANASTASIA ROBERTS
"Theatre takes student to Beijing", Wairarapa Times-Age, June 2, 2017
A stage play ought to be the point of intersection between the visible and invisible worlds, or, in other words, the display, the manifestation of the hidden.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
La Parodie, L'Invasion
Participation in the creative processes of theatre is the best way to reveal the human being, and through this to understand one's self and one's society.
FRANCES BABBAGE
Augusto Boal
There is something wrong when I go to the theatre whose province is the world and instead of being brought closer to the world I am cut off from it.
JULIAN BECK
The Life of the Theatre
I am entirely convinced that the drama renounces its chief privilege and glory when it waives its claim to be a popular art, and is content to address itself to coteries, however "high-browed."
WILLIAM ARCHER
Play-making: A Manual of Craftsmanship
It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed everyone is at a play. We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomimes.
IRIS MURDOCH
The Sea, the Sea