Acting is the ability to dream on cue.
Ralph RichardsonRead
Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.
Interpretation
Actors bring literary works to life, giving movement and emotion to the written word.
This quote by Ralph Richardson emphasizes the unique role of actors in the theatrical world. While playwrights and authors create the scripts and stories, it is the actors who interpret and perform these works, effectively giving them vitality and making them resonate with audiences. The comparison to jockeys suggests that actors guide the narrative, influencing how the story unfolds and how it is experienced by the audience.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a theater appreciation class to highlight the role of actors.
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.
When I don't have a story to tell, I'm a terror to live with.
I'm a brown girl from a Punjabi pind raised in Toronto. I don't expect literary critics and purists to understand the nuances of my experiences, and the experiences of the people around me... And my tradition holds that there is a magic in the written word. So how I write, what I write of, and why I write all comes naturally.
Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.