Memory,
my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
--Miss Prism in Act 2 of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. |
|
Memory's
like a policeman. Never there when you want it --Norman in Ronald
Harwood's The Dresser |
|
"People
of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't
know when to quit. Most men achieve because they are determined to." --
George Allen |
|
"The
stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return
of art to life." -- Oscar Wilde |
|
"The
life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of
a nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose -- and is a test of the
quality of a nation's civilization." -- John F. Kennedy |
|
"Goodness
is nothing in the furnace of art" --
Antonio Salieri the man who was once good but without the goodness to be a
great composer in Amadeus . |
|
"What
if imagination and the arts are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of
human experience?" -- Rollo May |
|
"You
use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your
soul." -- George Bernard Shaw |
|
"Stars
are only a resting place for those who have the courage to try!" --
Unknown |
|
"I
will accept anything in the theater . . . provided it amuses or moves
me. But if it does neither, I want to go home." Noel Cowardward |
|
"A
dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving
human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon
it." Thorton Wilder |
| "Character
cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial
and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and
success achieved." - Helen Keller |
| "Whatever
happens onstage must be for a purpose"-Constantin Stanislavski |
| "You
use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your
soul." -- George Bernard Shaw |
| You
are only yourself when no one's watching. ---Suzan-Lori
Parks's TOPDOG/UNDERDOG |
| A
playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage. . Edward
Albee |
|
"Try acting; it's
easier"...Sir L. Olivier to Dustin Hoffman, shooting "The
Marathon Man" |
| I
would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere.
There's nothing in the world equal
to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah
of applause!" -- Charles Dickens |
| "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 |
| "An
actor is a sculptor who carves in snow."...Edwin Booth |
| Although
the theater is not life, it is composed of fragments or imitations of
life, and people on both sides of the footlight have to unite to make
the fragments whole and the imitations genuine. --Brooks Atkinson |
| "Never
meddle with play actors, for they're a favored race."...Miguel De
Cervantes |
| "All
actors are cattle. Actually, all actors are not cattle, but should be
treated as such."...Alfred Hitchcock |
| "Every
performer has moments of self doubt. The great ones, however, overcome
every obstacle to reach their full artistic potential. It takes talent,
to be sure, but it also takes a personality that simply will not settle
for second best. That's what makes us respect the effort and admire the
results." -- Author Unknown |
| "If
a gun is hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the
last."
..Anton Chekhov |
| "I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the
position that one has reached in life as by obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed." -- Booker T. Washington |
|
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through
experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition
inspired, and success achieved." - Helen K |
| "Create an atmosphere in which anything is possible." -- Thomas Kelly |
| "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity." -- Unknown |
| "We know what we are, But we know not what we may be." -- William Shakespeare |
| The difference between truth and fiction: Fiction has to make
sense.- Mark Twain |
| Acting
expresses a part of the self otherwise hidden to the conscious
mind."...Lisa M. O'Neill |
| "Every
performer has moments of self doubt. The great ones, however, overcome
every obstacle to reach their full artistic potential. It takes talent,
to be sure, but it also takes a personality that simply will not settle
for second best. That's what makes us respect the effort and admire the
results." -- Author Unknown |
| "The
most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true
science." -- Albert Einstein |
| Cynicism
is only an unpleasant way of saying the truth.--Ben (to Regina), Act 1,
Lillian Hellman's The
Little Foxes. |
| Memory's
like a policeman. Never there when you want it --Norman in Ronald
Harwood's The Dresser,
Act 1. |
| Playwriting:
Remember! the word is playwright --W-R-I-G-H-T -- like wheelwright. A
play is not so much written as wrought. it's designed and built and
shaped; it's carved out -- writer and director Garson Kanin who died
3/13/99 at age 86. |
| A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
--Mark Twain |
| "Actors
are the only honest hypocrites."...William Hazlitt |
| Four
fundamental conditions of the drama separate it from the other arts. . .
. These conditions are:
1.
The theater is an art which reposes upon the work of many
collaborators. 2.
It is addressed to the group-mind. 3.
It is based upon a pretense and its very nature calls out a
multiplication of pretenses. 4.
Its action takes place in perpetual present time.------Thornton
Wilder |
| A
novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares
lose his audience for a minute --Terence Ratigan |
|
There are two kinds of theatre, good and bad. Much as I should like to
see theatre in America, I would rather have no theatre than bad theatre.
What we must strive for is perfection and come as close to it as is
humanly possible --Margot Jones |
| "All
the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely
players."...William Shakespeare: As You Like
It, II, 7 |
| "Can't
act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little."...Fred Astaire's screen
test results |
Everybody
should eavesdrop once in a while. There's nothing like eavesdropping to
show you that the world outside your head is different from the world
inside your head
--Malachi Stack in Thornton
Wilder's The
Matchmaker,
Act 3 |
| "What
if imagination and the arts are not frosting at all, but the
fountainhead of human experience?" -- Rollo May |
| A play
should give you something to think about. When I see a play and
understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good --T. S.
Eliot, quoted in the New York Post, September 23, 1963. |
| "The
only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted."...Voltaire |
"We
just put a man on the moon. If you miss a cue, no one will die.-----as said to Shelli Aderman by a
lighting designer during tech |
| "You
use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your
soul." -- George Bernard Shaw |
| Great
writers steal, mediocre writers imitate --Lillian Hellman to students in
her Harvard class on writing |
| "Never
meddle with play actors, for they're a favored race."...Miguel De
Cervantes |
| "An
actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour ortwo,
can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of
innocents"--Alec Guinness |
| Employment
in the Theater: "It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that
only on man in it can count on steady work--the night watchman"
--Tallulah Bankhead |
| "To go
into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum.
Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are
admitted."...Dr. Alex Marshall |
| It's
discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few
by deceit --Charles in Noël Coward's Blithe
Spirit, Act 1, scene 1. |
| "The
two happiest days in a theatre person's life: The day you start on a new
show and the day the thing closes." -- Unknown |
