It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.
Laurence OlivierRead
What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up and go home feeling they've wasted their money.
Interpretation
What this quote means
An actor's primary challenge is to engage the audience throughout a performance.
Laurence Olivier highlights the fundamental responsibility of an actor, which is to captivate the audience's attention and ensure they are fully immersed in the performance. If an audience becomes disengaged, it can lead to dissatisfaction, making them feel that their time and money have been wasted. This emphasizes the importance of skillful acting and storytelling in the realm of performance art.
Themes
ActorAudiencePerformanceEngagementTheater
In practice
Example use cases
A theater director might share this quote while discussing the importance of engagement in a rehearsal.
More from Laurence Olivier
All quotes →Work is life for me, it is the only point of life - and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything.
Laurence OlivierRead
I don't know what is better than the work that is given to the actor - to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.
Laurence OlivierRead
Acting is an everlasting search for truth.
Laurence OlivierRead
I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.
Laurence OlivierRead
Nine books have been written about me, and there's not a word of truth in any of them.
Laurence OlivierRead
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