Maurice Baring Quotes

It was a wonderful experience to live the life for a year; to spend all day doing Shakespeare and then do a play in the evening.

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that.

When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.

The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.

All the world's a stage.

I knew I wanted it to be a piece of theatre rather than just a concert.

Like hungry guests, a sitting audience looks / Plays are like suppers; poets are the cooks / The founder's you; the table is this place / The carvers we; the prologue is the grace / Each act a course, each scene, a different dish.

Theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair

I started writing plays, but the fact that plays don't last forever was too much for me to bear.

On the last day of our five-day work week, we did two performances and we had an audience. It was similar to theatre; we went from beginning to end, and it was very pleasing.

With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn't thinking, 'Oh, God, two more hours of this.'

When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature.

From the moment I saw 'Camelot' as a kid, the organic inclination of performing before a live audience is raw and visceral. Once you're out there, there's no yelling 'Cut!' or any such thing as a do-over because that moment has passed, and you're in it as it's happened and gone, sharing it with everyone.

It's too easy to underestimate your audience. But it's not rocket science: bad plays don't get people on seats; good plays do.

I think that much of the success of the Broadway mounting of 'Newsies' was due in no small part to the infectious camaraderie on stage between the boys.

Opera is a very stimulating place to work, and I believe it offers the most intense theatrical experience possible.

I don't think musicals are my thing. I'm not a big fan. Definitely have to get on the stage and do something like a straight play.

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!

The excitement of theatre is palpable but the frustrations, and the complete absence of a definitive evening - the play as text means practically nothing in a way - , there's no particular performance that is definitive in the way a novel is a solid object you hold in your hands and here it is. You can't say that about a play. If the novel gives us a sense of throbbing consciousness, theater is pure soul, beautiful and elusive.

I love theatre. I think it's the home of most actors...most actors start with it. It's so enjoyable to do and to be able to see your audience. And the process of theatre is great.

It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience.

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players.

When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions -- that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride.