I stay away from heavy-handed stuff, the good guy and the bad guy. It just doesn't interest me; all it does is create more fences between people, I think.
Sam ShepardRead
A good actor always sets you straight. If you've written a false moment and thought it was probably pretty great, the actor's gonna show you when he gets to that moment. They're the great test of the validity of the material.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A good actor reveals the truth in a script, highlighting its strengths and shortcomings.
In this quote, Sam Shepard emphasizes the critical role that actors play in the artistic process of storytelling. They serve as a mirror to the writer's work, ensuring that the emotional truths of a performance resonate authentically with the audience. A skilled actor can expose the weaknesses in a script, prompting writers to examine their material more closely and improve its integrity.
Themes
ActingPerformanceTruthScriptDrama
In practice
Example use cases
During a theater class, a teacher might use this quote to illustrate the importance of an actor's role in validating a script.
More from Sam Shepard
All quotes →I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. … The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius.
Sam ShepardRead
There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.
Sam ShepardRead
Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
Sam ShepardRead
On stage, you're not limited at all because you're free in language: language is the source of the imagination. You can travel farther in language than you can in any film.
Sam ShepardRead
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
Sam ShepardRead
Similar quotes
I write a lot of songs people don't hear. I really just enjoy the process. I finish 'em all. I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between the bad ones and the good ones.
Bob SegerRead
I am, and forever will be, devastated by the gift of Audrey Hepburn before my camera. I cannot lift her to greater heights. She is already there. I can only record. I cannot interpret her. There is no going further than who she is. She has achieved in herself her ultimate portrait.
Richard AvedonRead
The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
Hans HofmannRead
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.
Adrienne RichRead
All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.
Truman CapoteRead