Quotes About Theater

You can't make theater happen without actors. The actor is the central ingredient in making theater happen. Audiences may come to theaters to see the work of stage managers, directors and producers, but the only people who can communicate theater magic to audiences, through ideas and emotions, are the actors. They are the only ones who can communicate this by themselves, and if necessary, they can get along without you. But you can't make theater without the actor.

I'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.

The theater is a need for me. It's a terrible attraction, something I'm compelled to do. And one derives a form of nourishment from the theater which you can never get from films. Making films weakens you in some way. With the theater, the work itself is a regenerative process.

I want to keep working. I want to step away from young adult fiction. I want to do theater periodically - Farragut North reminded me how great it is. I started out in theater. I trained in theater and then I kind of fell into film and TV. I want to work with interesting artists, talented actors, talented directors, and talented scripts. Not necessarily leading roles.

A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprived

Cinema 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.

I love flexing theater Muscles. Television has merits as well, but there's no substitute for live theater.

I tried to go out for theater or theater arts, but I was too scared or too intimidated. But I had a lot of friends on the cross country team that had great senses of humor.

I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. In fact, a lot of my choices that I made were about that very thing. Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that's why I have a good, you know, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé. I'm really - it's what I set out to do as an actor originally.

There's only one movie theater in the entire city of Detroit. The entire city has one open movie theater, and it is in the - it is in the General Motors headquarters complex.

I really think that people who want to think more serious have to go and watch theater. Theater is a very sterilized art form. Not as much as music, but very close to music.

It's a certain kind of human compact that obviously you lose as soon as there is a screen and a camera there, so I think we'll always have theater. I think theater will always be a powerful force because we need that human touch, particularly as we spend more and more time with machines, cell phones, computers we start to lose our humanity.

With me it started as a child, going to the theater and being totally transported but also walking out of the theater thinking I was the protagonist in the film and reenacting the scenes.

I auditioned equally for film and theater. The difference is that theater has seasons, while film, it's always happening.

There was no theater program or anything where I'm from. So junior year in high school I started the theater program.

In some movies you feel like you're a very small part of a huge machine. Whereas in the theater you can have a very small part, but you can still feel the weight and the gravity of it. Given the nature of theater, it's a more concentrated and quiet experience

I want to get into the theater. I really wanted to be a theater director, but I turned out to be a movie director.

Because of the power of television, I was visible to everybody all over the world. But there are many things in the theater that are more fulfilling and that I look forward to doing more. But really, I love it all: theater, film, television.

From a young age, I had done a lot of theater and musical theater. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but every time I was away from acting, I just felt very incomplete and a little stir crazy.

I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.

The theater has to impose itself on the public, and not the public on the theater... The word "Art" should be written everywhere, in the auditorium and in the dressing rooms, before the word "Business" gets written there.

Surely, you go to the theater because you want to have a great evening in the theater.

If I do a lot of television, than I miss theater. If I do a lot of theater, than I miss film. This global thing of performing arts gives me strength.

I wasn't even in a theater because I guess nobody believed in me, so I was in the hallway of a theater on a platform that they would move so the main stage show could go on at eight o'clock and I'd be gone.

I think a theater show is a pure version of me doing my material. The theater crowd is a bit more polite, there really aren't hecklers, and there are a lot of people there to see me, and they're excited about the jokes and hanging out with me for a show.

Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music

Theatrical times are different from concert times, to put it simply. Taking a figure like [Mahatma] Gandhi and setting him on a stage requires thinking about what theater is about and what the whole experience is about and what we're trying to communicate in that way, so you get into certain less abstract considerations.

Theater has always been terrifying to me.

As a kid, before I got into music, I did all the drama classes, went to theater camp in the summers, so it wasn't totally a foreign world.

If you love acting and you've ever experienced theater, then you know that in a movie it's almost impossible to live out that experience, unless you're a Pacino or a De Niro or somebody who gets to pick their parts.

That whole world of musical theater was my first love. It's where I wanted to be when I was three years old.

I want an open dialogue. I want husbands and wives and people in relationships to walk out of the theater thinking, "Could this happen to me? I know I'm being tempted."

I wish to be moved. I cannot feel in life. I must have others do it for me in theater.

A lot of stand-up specials for cable are meant to glorify the comedian. They put you in a really beautiful theater, and sometimes they even blow a little smoke in there to make it misty and sweet. They make the guy look like he's a big rock star. But comedy's not really glamorous. It doesn't enhance comedy for it to look good.

Work in the theater is more fun than fun.

When you're dealing with a symbol in a realistic play, it is also a realistic fact. You must expect the audience's mind to work on both levels, symbolically and realistically. But we're trained so much in pure, realistic theater that it's difficult for us to handle things on two levels at the same time.

I love all of the arts. I love motion pictures. I love stage. I love theater.

Unless an entire row of people got up in the middle of a performance and left the theater in disgust, I felt as though I hadn't done my job.

This is the theater. And this is the best place for the imagination.

Live television drama was like live theater, because you moved without thinking about the camera. It followed you around. In film you have to be more aware of what the camera is doing.

I grew up in such a small area that there really weren't any acting classes. So I had to wait till I got to college, at the University of Washington. I was a theater major there and got my training. Then after college, I packed up my Honda Civic and kind of fulfilled the cliché of driving down to Los Angeles, and literally, brick by brick - you know, the slow and painful way - I built my career.

Theater is such a different ballgame than film. And that's really why I stayed in film, because I really love the reality of connecting with your own feelings, and really putting that across in a realistic way. In film, the smallest muscular movements in your face, that are produced just by sheer feelings, you're not controlling them in anyway, can be seen by people in the audience because your face is sometimes, frighteningly, 40 feet wide!

I learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.

Julie Taymor. She is my gold standard of stage directors. I think she has a comprehensive knowledge of theatrical form, since she lived in Indonesia, Java, Japan and France. Her knowledge of form is limitless. Whenever I get painted in a corner, I think about what form she would use, because that is what she practices. It's about accessing the theater traditions of the whole world.

Every movement of the theater by a skilful poet is communicated, as it were, by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions which actuate the several personages of the drama.

People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

I wouldnt be the same actor if I couldnt do theater.

The show can go on without me, and probably will, but I want to come back to act in Chicago. My wife and I just bought a condo downtown, and I want to do theater.