Quotes by Theatre Directors

Yes you may depend upon it he has the ability! He is the younger generation that stands ready to knock at my door - to make an end of Halvard Solness.
Henrik Ibsen
The sea possesses a power over one's moods that has the effect of a will. The sea can hypnotize. Nature in general can do so.
Henrik Ibsen
Different people have different duties assigned to them by Nature Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.
Henrik Ibsen
The strongest man is the one who stands most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
I'm not really a Jew just Jew-ish not the whole hog.
Jonathan Miller
In North America there is the general belief that everything can be fixed that life can be fixed up. In Europe the view is that a lot can't be fixed up and that living properly is not necessarily a question of mastering the technology so much as learning to live gracefully within the constraints that the species invents.
Jonathan Miller
Never stop. One always stops as soon as something is about to happen.
Peter Brook
What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.
Henrik Ibsen
I'm not really a Jew just Jew-ish not the whole hog.
Jonathan Miller
In North America there is the general belief that everything can be fixed that life can be fixed up. In Europe the view is that a lot can't be fixed up and that living properly is not necessarily a question of mastering the technology so much as learning to live gracefully within the constraints that the species invents.
Jonathan Miller
Never stop. One always stops as soon as something is about to happen.
Peter Brook
A minority may be right and a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
Marriage is something you have to give your whole mind to.
Henrik Ibsen
A minority may be right a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.
Henrik Ibsen
This is life! It can harden and it can exalt!
Henrik Ibsen
To seek one's goals and to drive toward it steeling one's heart is most uplifting!
Henrik Ibsen
And what if I did run my ship aground oh still it was splendid to sail it!
Henrik Ibsen
Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.
Henrik Ibsen
The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops.
Sir Robert Helpmann
Cage an eagle and it will bite at the wires, be they ofiron or of gold.
Henrik Ibsen
While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior — don't use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.
Henrik Ibsen
Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
Henrik Ibsen
It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.
Henrik Ibsen
Laughter's all the damned thing's fit for.
Henrik Ibsen
Everyone at every minute of his life must feel something. Only the dead have no sensations.
Konstantin Stanislavski
In the language of an actor, to know is synonymous with to feel
Konstantin Stanislavski
Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line. It's horrible to be laughed at against your will. Either you suppress unwelcome laughter or you start controlling it.
Keith Johnstone
Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.
Konstantin Stanislavski
The advantage of having an artistic tradition is that the younger artist could see an organic link between the real life of one's country and its art work which is a sublimation of that life.
Kuo Pao Kun
The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
Henrik Ibsen
The strongest men are the most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
Truth in art is truth n circumstances.
Konstantin Stanislavsky
My feeling is that a good teacher can get results using any method, and that a bad teacher can wreck any method.
Keith Johnstone
Torvald: I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora--bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves. Nora: But hundreds of thousands of women have done!
Henrik Ibsen
Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you. Nora- bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
Henrik Ibsen
As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age - just as a lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.
Keith Johnstone
One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.
Henrik Ibsen
Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made—which is something no ‘normal’ person would do.
Keith Johnstone
[On David Hume]Although he never admitted to being an atheist as such, he was clearly and unquestionably the most vividly elegant skeptic of them all.
Jonathan Miller
So always avoid banality. That is, avoid illustrating the author's words and remarks. If you want to create a true masterpiece you must always avoid beautiful lies: the truths on the calender under each date you find a proverb or saying such as: "He who is good to others will be happy." But this is not true. It is a lie. The spectator, perhaps, is content. The spectator likes easy truths. But we are not there to please or pander to the spectator. We are here to tell the truth.
Jerzy Grotowski
There are people who prefer to say 'yes' and there are people who prefer to say 'no'. Those who say 'yes' are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say 'no' are rewarded by the safety they attain.
Keith Johnstone
The Director's Role: You are the obstetrician. You are not the parent of this child we call the play. You are present at its birth for clinical reasons, like a doctor or midwife. Your job most of the time is simply to do no harm.When something does go wrong, however, your awareness that something is awry--and your clinical intervention to correct it--can determine whether the child will thrive or suffer, live or die.
Frank Hauser
A worthy failure is more valuable than a mediocre success.
Kuo Pao Kun
You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
Henrik Ibsen
What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?
Henrik Ibsen
Make the difficult habitual, the habitual easy, and the easy beautiful.
Constantin S. Stanislavski
Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility will last in him?
Henrik Ibsen
We will talk of this again, when the grass has first withered on her grave. Then you'll hear him spouting about "the child too early torn from her father's heart;" then you'll see him steep himself in a syrup of sentiment and self-admiration and self-pity. Just you wait!
Henrik Ibsen
I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
Henrik Ibsen
She was an extraordinary person too! Would you believe it, she cut her hair short, and used to go about in men’s boots in bad weather
Henrik Ibsen
When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls.
Henrik Ibsen
You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you - or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which - I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: Yes; it is just so, Torvald. While I was still at home with father, he used to tell me all his views, and so of course I held the same views; if at any time I had a different view I concealed it, because he would not have liked people with opinions of their own. He used to call me his little doll, and play with me, as I in my turn used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house.
Henrik Ibsen
NORA: No; only merry. And you were always so friendly and kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a nursery. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's doll-child. And my children were, in their turn, my dolls. I was exceedingly delighted when you played with me, just as children were whenever I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.
Henrik Ibsen
The right? Ah, what does it help to be in the right if you don't have any power?
Henrik Ibsen
I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one.
Henrik Ibsen
If you have a rifle, hanging on the wall in the first act, it should fire in the last act”.
Konstantin Stanislavski
I wasnt political in order to be political
Jerzy Grotowski