Explore Quotes on Theatre

Family is the theatre of the spiritual drama, the place where things happen, especially the things that matter.

I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.

Great drama is the souvenir of the adventure of a master among the pieces of his own soul.

The object is freedom.

Cruelty in the theatre is unrelenting decisiveness, diligence, strictness.

Realism is something we practice when we aren't feeling very well. When we don't feel up to the extra effort.

Embarrassment is a partner in the creative act.

There are two impulses in theatre: to be frivolous or to make rules.

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.

Theatre takes place all the time - wherever one is - and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.

You can throw away the privilege of acting, but that would be such a shame. The tribe has elected you to tell its story. You are the shaman/healer, that's what the storyteller is, and I think it's important for actors to appreciate that. Too often actors think it's all about them, when in reality it's all about the audience being able to recognize themselves in you. The more you pull away from the public, the less power you have on screen.

It is an actor's passion to observe the world. It is his art to become what he observes. And finally, it is his job to let the world observe him.

The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks / Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks / The founder's you; the table is this place / The carvers we; the prologue is the grace / Each act a course, each scene, a different dish.

In London, theatregoers expect to laugh; in Paris, they wait grimly for proof that they should.

An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham.

There, at the centre, are the artists who really form the consciousness of their time; they respond deeply, intuitively to what is happening, what has happened, and what will happen, and their response is expressed in metaphor, in image and in fable.

Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding.

Theatre is not supposed to represent psychology but passions, which is totally different. Its role is to represent the soul's different emotional states, and those of the mind, the world history.

Theatre is very much concerned with the society, with the social situation... A theatre piece of itself, demands a confrontation with the audience. It demands that you connect with people; it demands a collective and social effort with the company and later with the audience.

Before our eyes is fought a battle of symbols... for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins and when the poetry that occurs on the stage sustains and superheats the realized symbols.