Popular quotes about Theater! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.
Diego LunaI've been working in theater, really, since about 1965. I started working with the Mabou Mines about then, and in a way I've always worked in the theater, but it's never been a main part of my work. And it wasn't until Einstein that I kind of shifted into high gear with theater, working with Bob, with Bob Wilson. And since then I find it a very attractive form to work in. It's just an extension of my work.
Philip GlassI've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.
Trevor NunnCinema and theater - it's apples and oranges. You can't really beat movies. Yeah, when you're on an Oliver Stone set everybody brings their A game. Everybody brings their A game, from the top to the bottom and in between. In terms of theater you know there is no way to really duplicate that rush you get when you take an audience that is live and right there in front of you through the journey of a great play and you go through these emotions so that they can experience them without having to go through them themselves.
John Buffalo MailerIn Mexico, theater is very underground, so if youre a theater actor its very difficult to make a living. But its also a very beautiful pathway to knowledge and to an open education.
Gael Garcia BernalI cannot control what you bring into the theater when you see the film. I can't control what my parents bring in. I can't control what some random person on Twitter brings in to the theater. All I can control is the hour and 50 minutes that the movie lasts, and try to give it absolutely everything I can.
James PonsoldtWhen student-actors see people and the way they behave when together, see the color of the sky, hear the sounds in the air, feel the ground beneath them and the wind on their faces, they get a wider view of their personal world and development in the theater is quickened. The world provides the material for the theater and artistic growth develops hand-in-hand with one's recognition of it and one's self within it.
Viola SpolinWell, I'm... first and foremost I'm a theater guy and everything that I know comes from the theater.
Scott BakulaGood live theater disturbs molecules. You create an energy source around yourself and it alternates between you and the audience. Anybody who sees live theater should come out a little rearranged.
Glenn CloseI was a huge theater geek growing up, and that was not the easiest thing in the world, especially growing up in Chicago, where sports are really the norm. I was always off to the theater at night, from 7 years old on. Friends there in the Midwest who could talk to you about the idiosyncrasies of 'Pippin' were few and far between.
Johnny GaleckiField of Dreams is the only movie - and I saw it in the theater - on an afternoon when I was on location somewhere, and there were like 12 people in the theater. I was just so devastated; I couldn't get out of my seat. And I sat and watched it a second time.
Paul ReiserI felt it was really important to come here to see what was happening in New York. So, I came to see film and accidentally I stumbled upon theater, so I discovered Andre Gregory, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, and theater became my first anchor.
Babette MangolteI prefer theater, but I love to do films, and I prefer theater primarily because I've done more. I know less about movies. You can't lie in either medium. The wonderful thing is that the camera, just like an audience, is made out of skin - because celluloid is skin.
Amanda PlummerI think the New York theater audience is very savvy. Sometimes you get newbies who think they're going to be watching Smash onstage, and sometimes you have people who have been coming to theater for years. It's the combination of those people in an audience that makes for a pretty amazing night - their ability to give each other permission to react and enjoy, in a way that maybe they wouldn't if they weren't sitting next to each other.
Anika Noni RoseI knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater.
Nancy AllenI think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.
Sam MendesI always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.
Susan SarandonAlthough I performed in high school, my first real experience with theater was performing with a student-run organization at Vanderbilt University called The Original Cast where I learned that I loved performing and especially loved theater people.
Nancy AllenI went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person.
Mackenzie DavisTennis is more than just a sport. It's an art, like the ballet. Or like a performance in the theater.
Bill TildenI don't have personal experience and knowledge about anything but theater. I've been tutored very well on the subject, but ultimately I'm going back to the rules of drama. There are genres that I like as an audience member that I can't write as a writer. I can't write crime, and I like a good thriller as much as anybody.
Aaron SorkinTheater is all about the rehearsal process. In fact, I think a lot of times opening night there's a mixed sadness because you're finished with a lot of people's favorite part of the process, which is finding the character and discovering it, and then you get to live it.
Debra WingerRadio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them.
Mercedes McCambridgeIn a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery
Max von SydowFirst I went to C.W. Post and I was a psychology and theater major and then I transferred to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts as a drama major.
John LeguizamoComedy people are always present because they're always looking for the funniest version of whatever the line is. Sometimes theater people, where scripts are sacrosanct, aren't quite as present in scenes. That's a massive generalization, but in my experience, I find that comedy people are great to improvise with and to do scenes with because they're there.
Chris O'DowdGareth [Edwards] was very much about including everyone in what we were making, so he would cut together different scenes to show us what we were making. And the crew, cast, everyone would go into a theater there at Pinewood Studios and watch 10 minutes of what we were making. It was always so exciting. It looked amazing, and the music was huge.
Alan TudykThe taboo for straight actors playing gay is gone... My mother was squirming a bit in the theater because she comes from a different generation.
Dean CainI did a play called 'On Golden Pond' in a dinner theater in Maine and then went to New York for a talent competition having put together a three-man juggling routine and some one-liners and I got myself an agent from that
Patrick DempseyIt's always fun to do something that you know ultimately is not about the money, and it's certainly not for the fame - because it's a pain in the ass. But it's really the person in the theater seat you think about when you sit in a room and write.
Jim CarreyWell, he's got a much bigger circus to play with, and he has a lot more financing available, and he has a lot more time available. I think that makes a huge difference. I think he instinctively knows how to make films and all the different ways that you can make stuff. He's very gadget-wise, and he's very smart about all the different things that are available to a filmmaker nowadays, and he makes very good use of them. He has a theater in his house, for God's sake. It has proper curtains on it and everything. It's pretty wild.
Michael MadsenThe theater, when it is potent enough to deserve its ancestry, is always dangerous; that is why it is instinctively feared by people who do not want change, but only preservation of the status quo.
Hallie FlanaganI changed my major to English and I went off to Fort Collins. And within the first couple of weeks, I noticed that they were having auditions for a production in their theater department. They were going to stage Jean Anouilh's Becket, which was a film I loved, with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. So I went down and auditioned, and I got the role. I got the Peter O'Toole part. So here I was, a 19-year-old playing King Henry.
Keith CarradineA lot of the shows that really become hit shows are often demonstrated, like Mystery Science Theater.
Joel HodgsonMacbeth is a very popular play with audiences. If you want to sell out a theater, just mount a production of Macbeth. It's a short play, it's an exciting play, it's easy to understand, and it attracts great acting.
Ian MckellenWell, all I can say is thank goodness I had 15 years of theater before ever I did film roles. You build technique that you can rely on
Chris CooperI have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual.
Michael ShannonYou must not demand the failure of your peers, because the more good things that are around in film, in television, in theater - why the better it is for all of us.
Jerome LawrenceI talked to people that I'd done theater with, older actors and stuff. There's a lot of people who go into the business, and they must think they're good, or they wouldn't be in it. Why do you think that you're good enough to go into the business and make money at it? So I really wanted to ask myself that question a lot. Because it was an important kind of thing that I was going to do. I really wanted to do it, I loved it, and I thought that I was good enough that I could make money at it. And that's really what it came down to.
Dean NorrisAnd so I've always been fascinated by the technical end of theater, and a lot of my closest friends are not actors, but in the other end of the business.
Rene AuberjonoisOne night I had an idea while I was at the movies: to photograph the film itself. I tried to imagine photographing an entire feature film with my camera. I could already picture the projection screen making itself visible as a white rectangle. In my imagination, this would appear as a glowing, white rectangle; it would come forward from the projection surface and illuminate the entire theater. This idea struck me as being very interesting, mysterious, and even religious.
Hiroshi SugimotoBut Hitler didn't strive for the annihilation of the Jews - he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning that Jewish influence was too great, that of all the lawyers in Berlin, eighty percent were Jewish. Hitler thought that a small percentage of the people, the Jews, should not be allowed to control the theater, cinema, radio, et cetera.
Franz von Papen