Character Theatre Quotes

#1. In a regular theatre, you'd be kind of moving your eye from one character 5 feet over to the right on the cut. In IMAX, suddenly that's like 20 feet. So I would love to do something. I think I would really want to take the massive screen into consideration so that it would be done properly.

Pete Docter

#2. I think about entrance and exits. I think about dialogue. But most of all I think about voice - all character development in theatre is done through voice. And as I wrote my debut novel "The Big Fear", I thought about narrative voice with every line.

Andrew Case

#3. 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 Mamet

#4. I'd like to make character-based dramas. I end up writing thrillers a lot - these psychological character-based things with weird people doing horrible things to each other - coming to a theatre near you!

Joseph Mazzello

#5. Small boys often produce their own plays; but usually the parts are not written out. They hardly need to be, for the main line of each character is always "Stick 'em up!" In these plays the curtain is always rung down on a set of corpses, for small boys are by nature through and uncompromising.

A.S. Neill

#6. I would love to do anything involving a good strong character, whether it's in film, TV or theatre. My dream role's already been taken by Keira Knightley in 'Pride and Prejudice.' Growing up, I really wanted to be Lizzie Bennett.

Roxanne McKee

#7. And if Henry Higgins is not the most reprehensible character ever written for the stage, that's only because somewhere, somehow, someone is composing a musical biography of Ronald Reagan

Steve Kluger

#8. There are a lot of pros to doing a film, as far as it helping your film career, and it is completely different financially. But theatre is the only place where you get to actually be the character, and nobody is going to come around and change it later.

Jimmi Simpson

#9. A good actor makes clear the meaning of the words. A better actor gives also the emotion of the part. The best actor adds emotion of which the character is unconscious.

Clare Eames

#10. The theatre has built a whole art round the actor, based on the man and his double - the actor and his character.

Jean-Louis Barrault

#11. I recently did a play, Athol Fugard's 'Coming Home' at Long Wharf Theatre, where I played one character throughout - I sat at a table and didn't have any costume changes. Following one character's arc from beginning to end is a whole different mindset.

Colman Domingo

#12. I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.

Christopher Eccleston

#13. What justifies a character singing one idea for 3 minutes on the screen? I get impatient and want the story to carry on. I don't get impatient in the theatre.

Stephen Sondheim

#14. Theatre should be a taxing experience: the greatest achievement of a writer is to produce a character who creates anxiety.

Howard Barker

#15. I have a strong and strange character, and I've rarely met directors who knew what to do with this character. One of the few who did was my father, and in the theatre, Arthur Nauzyciel.

Lou Doillon

#16. The great lesson in theatre is that you live the story every night, and that is a wonderful vehicle for getting to the richest places in a performance or investing a character with the richest life.

Celia Weston

#17. There's this thing in TV that I find hysterical where the writers and creators will ask us if you want to know what happens to your character or if you want to experience it episode by episode. In the theatre, we always know the ending; we always know where the character is going.

Carrie Coon

#18. Every character is a part of you and a part of the character that you are going to evolve into that you are not yet.

Angelina Jolie

#19. When I came on the scene, there was The Nualas, who were doing character comedy, but there weren't any other women doing stand-up because Michelle Read had gone more into theatre.

Deirdre O'Kane

#20. Because I like theatre and I love a challenge. With 'ZEBRA!' I've found a new Australian play where I can create a character first - that's what I live to do.

Bryan Brown

#21. Avant-garde theatre, with its distrust of the individual (that bourgeois invention), tends to go beyond [character] and the psychological approach in search of a syntax of types and characters which are deconstructed and post-individual.

Patrice Pavis

#22. I've always been short and stocky. So when I got into repertory theatre after graduation, I found myself doing character roles: because of my deep voice, shape and height, I was playing 40-year-old, 50-year-old roles at the age of 23.

David Suchet

#23. Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it.

Aristotle.

#24. Many of my short fictions use theatre as a metaphor for situations in which characters find themselves estranged from the larger, uncontrollable world that may or may not lie beyond the proscenium arch.

Norman Lock

#25. What I like about theatre is the responsibility you have with your character.

Audrey Tautou

#26. Nobody "becomes" a character. You can't act unless you are who you are.

Marlon Brando

#27. What I love is a good role. In the theatre, there is just a canon of extraordinary roles, the quality of character is amazing, but I also love working in front of a camera. It was the first one for me; as a kid I was in front of a camera. I feel at home.

Megan Follows

#28. Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country.

Mahatma Gandhi

#29. The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action!

Augusto Boal

#30. The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

Donald Pleasence

#31. The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre.

Isabelle Huppert

#32. I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you're playing.

Rainn Wilson

#33. Amy Rapp, my producing partner, and I are drawn to character-driven material. We're developing and producing movies and TV, fiction and non-fiction, studio and independent, broadcast and cable, theatre, and web so our slate is really diverse.

Meredith Vieira