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.
Sam ShepardRead
When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing a play is a creative process similar to composing music, where one discovers various elements like rhythm and harmony.
In this quote, Sam Shepard illustrates the art of playwriting by comparing it to music composition. Just as a musician discovers rhythms, melodies, and harmonies, a playwright finds the essential elements of their story as it develops, suggesting that creativity involves a natural exploration of ideas and emotions integrated into the narrative.
Themes
PlaywritingMusicRhythmCreativityTheater
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on playwriting, a teacher quoted Shepard to inspire students about the creative process.
More from Sam Shepard
All quotes →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
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
Similar quotes
You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.
David MametRead
I had composed songs, I sang, and played the vina. Practising this music I arrived at a stage where I touched the music of the spheres. Then every soul became a musical note, and all life became music. Inspired by it I spoke to the people, and those who were attracted by my words listened to them instead of listening to my songs.
Hazrat Inayat KhanRead
I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?
Alan ArkinRead
The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.
William BeebeRead
The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people.
Tony KushnerRead