Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Interpretation
Theatre presents numerous challenges that can lead to failure, yet it remains an engaging art form.
This quote by Tom Stoppard highlights the inherent challenges in theatrical productions, suggesting that the journey of creating art is fraught with difficulties and potential failures. Despite these obstacles, the excitement and immediacy of theatre draw people in, emphasizing both the risks and rewards of artistic expression.
In practice
During a speech at a drama festival, one might say, 'As Tom Stoppard once noted, theatre is filled with insurmountable obstacles, reminding us of the resilience required in the arts.'
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
When you play a videogame, you could be a completely different person than you are in the real world, certain aspects of the way your brain works can be leveraged for something you could never do in the real world.
I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.
I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, America's Schubert.
Profound music leads us beyond language...to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.
An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle.
I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.
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