Explore Quotes on Theatre

I've taught both screenwriting and playwriting, and playwriting is both much harder and much more rewarding. One can teach people how to tell a story in cinematic ways, but theater is a much more elusive craft.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.

Once after Barefoot In the Park had been playing for about a week I went back to see it, watching the audience, which was just falling over laughing except for one guy sitting the aisle. I was transfixed. I said to myself, there seems to be no way to get to him. No one else would I watch except this one man. My wife joined me about 20 minutes later and asked me how it was going, and I said, terrible. I really meant it. There was no way to get to this man. It destroyed me.

Playwriting isn't a calling so much as it is a hazing process.

I want to make the audience laugh and cry within ten seconds, to show just how close those emotions are.

The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist . . . Does not see the graves under the flowers.

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.

The more acute the experience, the less articulate its expression.

Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.

Writing a play, you start with less, so more is demanded of you. It's as if you have to not only write a symphony, but invent the instruments as well.

But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist.

I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced-although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world-what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done.

I started writing for the theatre because I hated it.

It's no use to go and take courses in playwriting any more than it's much use taking courses in acting. Better play to a bad matinée in Hull, it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction.

If the nature of human experience changes with the color of a man's skin, then the racists have been right all along.

The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.

One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick.

I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.

I haven't really written my plays and books - I've heard them. The stories are there already, singing in your genes and in your blood.

Oftentimes the quality of the light tells the story: the time of day, the weather, whether sun is streaming through the window. It can also help you appreciate what the actor is feeling, what the playwright wants you to feel. Any engineer can put a spot on someone.