Theatre Quotes

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.

Tennessee Williams

How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

Christiaan Huygens

In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.

Barbara Ehrenreich

As good surgical doctor works on a patient in the theater with varied kinds of surgical instruments, so a true leader also needs a clean bag of leadership characters that vary from task to task. One-way leaders are obvious failures!

Israelmore Ayivor

Small boys often produce their own plays; but usually the parts are not written out. They hardly need to be, for the main line of each character is always "Stick 'em up!" In these plays the curtain is always rung down on a set of corpses, for small boys are by nature through and uncompromising.

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.

What I want is irrelevant. This is your life, Faith.

Art doesn’t give rise to anything in us that isn’t already there. It simply stirs our curious consciousness and sparks a fire that illuminates who we have always wanted to be.

Even the world’s greatest actor cannot fake an erection.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

These days, you could stage a three-point orgy in the garden and nobody would bat an eye...

That´s the problem with planning a late night supper after the opera, not only does the hero or the heroine die singing, but you end up famished after the last notes of the finale.

E.A. Bucchianeri

Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.

If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.

Shannon L. Alder