Top 100 Theatre Play Quotes
#1. The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage.
Andrzej Wajda
#2. From there, I tried out for a community theatre play, joined an improv group ... it all started opening up.
Kevin James
#3. A man stroking a dog's head means the universe is stroking the universe; a child playing with a little dog means the universe is playing with the universe! If the universe is a theatre play, then we can be sure that there is only one player: The universe itself! Everything we see is the same player!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#4. Hollywood is a very interesting place to deal with. And having been a theatre person, I was quite surprised by the slipperiness of some people in Holly-weird. There was a part of me that just said, 'If this is the way the game is played, I'm not sure I want to play it.'
Joyce DeWitt
#5. The only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted.
Voltaire
#6. Even if the play is great, every day in theatre you have to question everything because the audience is new every day. I love that.
Clotilde Hesme
#7. The only theatre I do is my own. Somehow, my life is the only life that I can play.
Marina Abramovic
#8. I love going to see the theatre whether it's a Broadway play or a Russian ballet company.
Michael Ealy
#9. Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears [ ... ]
Edgar Allan Poe
#10. Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt.
John Lahr
#11. I first decided to become an actor at school. A teacher gave us a play to do and that had a major impact. At first, I wanted to work in the theatre, but there was something about the ambience of film, especially American films, that always attracted me.
Jean Reno
#13. 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
#14. I went to a lot of theatre schools, got a lot of training, did a lot of repertory where you do a different play every night. I took a lot of voice, movement, and acting classes.
Jeffrey Combs
#15. Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.
Meredith Willson
#16. I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet.' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it.
Alan Cumming
#17. Filming is quite exciting because every day is different, but it can involve long hours standing around in chilly locations. Theatre is a very different challenge because every night you're striving to keep it fresh, even though you might have been performing the same play for months.
Samantha Bond
#18. Totus mundus agit histrionem. (All the World's a Stage.)
[Motto of William Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (f. 1599) and its acting company, The King's Men; taken from the first play to be performed on the new stage.]
William Shakespeare
#19. We have a desperate need for producers in the [commercial Broadway] theatre, and it is very hard for them to get money and find investors for new plays.
Arthur Laurents
#21. I would love to do a play, but I don't know about musical theatre. I've never done anything like that.
Chandra West
#22. I've made a point of trying not to play the same part, and of moving between theatre and film and TV. The idea is that by the time you come back, you have been away for a year and people have forgotten you. If you like having time off, which I do, that's a good career strategy.
Aidan Gillen
#23. I saw a play in a black box theatre, and it changed my life.
Geneva Carr
#24. I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.
Samantha Barks
#25. Every play should be 90 minutes. There would be so many more theatre-goers if plays were shorter.
Eve Myles
#26. The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.
Peter Ackroyd
#27. I'm still trying to write. I wrote a play a few years ago, so I'm trying to start writing again. The play was called The Commons Of Pensacola. It was at MTC [Manhattan Theatre Club] with Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner. It was kind of like a riff on Ruth Madoff.
Amanda Peet
#28. I don't see why people want new plays all the time. What would happen to concerts if people wanted new music all the time?
Clive Barnes
#29. What I've learned along the way is that existence is cosmic theatre, but paradoxically, we should play our roles to the absolute best of our ability while having the wisdom not to take them too seriously.
Tom Robbins
#30. I saw Waiting for Godot when I was 17 in rep with a then unknown actor called Peter O'Toole playing Vladimir. I remember leaving the theatre promising myself that one day I would have a go at this play and then pretty much forgot it for 50 years.
Patrick Stewart
#31. To a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.
George Bernard Shaw
#32. There was no real fringe theatre in London until way after the war, so either a play was done secretly with a club licence or it was done openly and had to be assessed along with everything else.
Timothy West
#33. Theatre outings are my favourite thing to spend money on. The most influential play I saw was 'Bent,' which starred Ian McKellen. And I loved the original performance of 'The Rocky Horror Show,' with Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry at the Royal Court, when I was about 15.
Dawn French
#34. I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world.
Elliot Cowan
#35. I've been acting since I was 8 - I used to play hockey and there was a kids' theatre down the street from my house and one day I just walked in and signed up for auditions for 'The Wizard Of Oz.'
Nico Tortorella
#36. Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and should be centered on acting in plays rather than just exercises, improvisations, monologues, or even scenes.
Richard Hornby
#37. Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible.
Neil Gaiman
#38. I switched to thoughts of the play. It was by far the healthiest item to concentrate on. Rehearsals were only days away; there is something wildly exciting about a company assembling for the first time on stage. There is also something strangely sexy about it. I can't pin it down, there just is.
James Kirkwood Jr.
#39. I have always added dance to my productions. When I was directing theatre, I added dance sequences where they didn't exist in the play. I think dance is the ultimate form of expression.
Valerie Weiss
#40. When I was in college, all the pretty women were in the theatre, so I auditioned for a play.
Judd Nelson
#41. We are reaching levels of high experiential comfort
and our standards will keep rising.
We want to feel, we want to experience,
we want to connect, we want intelligence,
and we want to play;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
A new theatre is on its way.
Natasha Tsakos
#42. I did a lot of community theatre and met a manager that worked out of Philadelphia, and she started sending me up to New York for auditions, and I got the part in a play at Manhattan Theatre Club when I was 15.
John Gallagher Jr.
#43. I'd never seen a guy my own age play the piano. It was like sex and musical theatre fused together.
E. Lockhart
#44. I think theatre is a democratic act and I think writing a play is not a democratic act. I think we should give writers more leeway and space to write the thing they want to write, and then we should produce the play, multiple times, and let them re-write it.
Sarah Ruhl
#45. If Anthem finds an audience in New York City, my hope would be to see the play transferred to a commercial theatre for an open-ended run.
Jeff Britting
#46. When football stars disappear, so do the teams, and that is a very curious phenomenon. It is like in the theatre, in a play, where there is a great star. If the star is not well, the whole cast suffers.
Pele
#47. You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience, and each must give something.
Kenneth Haigh
#48. I don't approve of censorship. I like the French theatre idea. Put on the play, and if the audience doesn't care for it, or feels offended by it, they rip up the seats.
John Huston
#49. You never get anywhere until you figure out the difference between passion and compassion.
Cynthia Heimel
#50. Pass the popcorn, please. Life is a film, theatre, a theatre of the soul. We play different roles on different stages. At death, we walk offstage. At birth, we walk onstage.
Frederick Lenz
#51.
and yet, whenever he started with the questions I froze stiff, as if I'd been pushed onstage in a play where I didn't know the lines.
Donna Tartt
#52. A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.
Eric Bentley
#53. I go to the theatre expecting to have a good time. I want each play and performance to take me somewhere. Naturally, this doesn't always happen.
John Lahr
#54. There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made.
Edward Albee
#55. I was five when I did my first show with the Mountain Play Theatre company in Marin County. I started young, and since no one in my family was involved in the industry in any way shape or form, I think everyone thought I'd do a few plays and that would be it. But then I kept doing it.
Claire Coffee
#57. The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays.
Stella Adler
#58. In Coetzee's eyes, we human beings will never abandon politics because politics is too convenient and too attractive as a theatre in which to give play to our baser emotions.
J.M. Coetzee
#59. I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience.
Simon McBurney
#60. I was an usher at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. You had to watch whatever play they had on 40 times.
Robert Webb
#61. 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
#62. I write the occasional entry for the 'Times' Theatre blog, especially when I'm in London and seeing two shows a day, but I don't tweet. I don't want to have to express my opinion in 140 characters. That's like writing haiku. You need a certain amount of legroom to review a play properly.
Ben Brantley
#63. I just love the hours of the theatre, I love the way it operates. I always say that when you're doing a play it's like getting a shot of B12, and when you do television for a long series you need a shot of B12.
Gavin MacLeod
#64. London has this culture of the theatre that is so big, it was a like a dream - but I never had a thought to be able to play here because my English was not very good. So being given the opportunity to come work here was like a gift.
Elena Roger
#65. Audiences may experience an epiphany at a play, whether that play is consciously "Christian" or not; God is not limited by our conscious preparation (as artists or audiences). God's Spirit enters our lives in the most surprising of places-even in the theatre.
Todd E. Johnson
#66. It hath evermore been the notorious badge of prostituted Strumpets and the lewdest Harlots, to ramble abroad to Plays, to Playhouses; whither no honest, chaste or sober Girls or Women, but only branded Whores and infamous Adulteresses, did usually resort in ancient times.
William Prynne
#67. In my final year at Bristol University, I wrote a play called 'White Feathers.' It was produced in the studio theatre at the students' union in early 1999, when I was 21. It's 100 pages long: a very traditional play, with an interval, about deserters in the First World War.
Laura Wade
#68. Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.
Anton Chekhov
#69. This is a group effort. This is group theatre. This is no big star turn. You could do things with it to do that but it would just be out of kilter. This is one reason I like this play. This is a unit.
Gavin MacLeod
#70. We were like two performers in a play, but we were divided, we were not acting with one another. We had to endure it alone, we had to put up this show, this miserable, sham performance for the sake of all these people I did not know and did not want to see again.
Daphne Du Maurier
#71. The best author is a dead author, because he's out of your way and you own the play. Take what he has given you and use it for what you need.
Stella Adler
#72. The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.
Matt Damon
#73. I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway.
Lynn Nottage
#74. When you're doing a play and you're afraid of a scene, that's the scene you should embrace, because that's the scene that will tell you something about the play.
Raul Esparza
#75. Life in the theatre isn't necessarily when you get money from performing. It isn't when you sign a contract. It isn't even when you are in a play. It's when you understand it. If you understand it, you'll know why you want to act.
Stella Adler
#76. Playing Shakespeare requires technique. You don't play a Bach toccata by getting in the mood.
Kevin Kline
#77. In many ways, theatre is more rewarding for a writer. I used to think it was like painting a wall - that when the play is finished, it's done - but now I realise it's more like gardening; you plant the thing, then you have to constantly tend it. You're part of a thing that's living.
Lee Hall
#78. I like to hang out with my friends, go to the theatre, watch DVDs, read, play with my niece.
Michelle Ryan
#79. A good play is a play which when acted upon the boards make an audience interested and pleased. A play that fails in this is a bad play.
Maurice Baring
#80. I had my appendix removed in my 20s. I was in the middle of a play with Helen Mirren at the Royal Court Theatre, a fabulous career break. Then two weeks in I began suffering the most horrendous pain and had to pull out. Sadly, by the time I'd recovered, the show's run had ended.
Cherie Lunghi
#81. Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence ... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.
Jean Cocteau
#82. I believe in the immortality of the Theatre, it is a most joyous place to hide, for all those who have secretly put their childhood in their pockets and run off and away with it, to play on to the end of their days.
Max Reinhardt
#83. 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.
Anton Chekhov
#84. All actors know that the real adrenaline rush is in doing theatre. There is an immediate connect, and a role in a play, for an actor, is the biggest temptation.
Lillete Dubey
#85. I was the first African-American woman to play Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' It was at the Virginia State Theatre, and we turned Richmond upside down.
Tamara Tunie
#86. A play is a painting that moves. Instead of it holding still, and you are looking at it, you hold still and it scrolls by.
Patricia Zipprodt
#87. The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped / on a seat and now it is lying in the alley behind / the theatre where my play is echoed by dying voices.
Frank O'Hara
#88. The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.
Christopher Meloni
#89. There's such a sense of theatre in getting glammed up; it's like putting on a play or short film.
Felicity Jones
#90. I loved the theatre-my dad gave me many plays and books to read. The dramatic form just spoke to me.
Danny Burstein
#91. When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.
Vivica A. Fox
#92. There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead.
Robert Edmond Jones
#93. I love the theatre. It's a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It's a nice way to live your life.
Alfred Molina
#94. Charity in the theatre usually begins and ends with people who have a play opening the week following one's own. Their unlikely benevolence is not so much a purity of heart as the knowledge that they face a firing line with rifles aimed in exactly the same direction.
Moss Hart
#95. As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.
Sylvester McCoy
#96. I've played a lot of roles I haven't wanted to play, either because they needed someone in the theatre or because they couldn't do it without me 'cause they don't have anyone else the right age.
John Mahoney
#97. I've actually been looking at plays, and I have read a bunch of stuff. I would love to do it. I have thought about theatre on and off over the years, but other things kept getting in the way. Maybe now's the time.
Jerzy Jeszke
#98. Any play I do, anything I do in the theatre, it's absolutely essential for me in a sense, to create a family, to put a group of people together who love to share together what they're doing, rather than be individuals.
George Ogilvie
#99. Having done film, TV and theatre, the nicest final bit of the jigsaw is to do live comedy, because you can talk to the audience. It feels really natural to be able to laugh with them, but at the same time still be within the framework of a play.
Jessie Cave
#100. The first act's doubtful, but we say, it is the last commends the play.
Robert Herrick
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