Theatrical Art Quotes

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

I think that it's important not to take [acting] too seriously. It's all pretend. It's a strange job.

It is my greatest joy to live a really good part, even though it imposes great strain. An artist is tired but proud when he has created a great work of art. So it is with the actor who really lives a great role and is proud of the part he played.

What I have done in 'Company' can't be defined.

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.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

But I want to deepen as an artist, and working with Shakespeare definitely points in that direction.

And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway, as far as I'm concerned, is in New York the pride of New York theater.

The reason you do this stuff - comedy, plays, movies - is to be seized by something, to disappear in the service of an idea.

I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul.

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

I think when I was doing 'Amistad,' I was just too young to really understand what the process was, and beyond that, I hadn't really got involved. It was just somehow - and I thought that the artistry was all in the theater.

The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art.

Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself, and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world.

With 'Hamilton,' what's cool about the show is that even super-old white people come to see the show and hang on every word, it's that good.

I deliberately look for colorful people. They're very right for theatre. Theatre has to be theatrical. If you can get color into the accountant, you've got something. Write the whole thing first and then say he's an accountant. That's a very wacky accountant, but so what? Theatricality feeds and challenges the actor, the director, and the designers.

Direction is the most invisible part of the theatrical art. You don't see it.

Nothing really attracts me to the film industry, to be perfectly honest. I look at acting as an art, and that's all it is for me. It's just fun.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

You get to have some bigger comedic moments with some very real dramatic stuff. All that in one makes for a fulfilling artistic job.

The ideas of the great playwrights are almost always larger than the experiences of even the best actors.

Acting is a total physical, emotional sensation.

Doing Shakespeare on stage with Kenneth Branagh, I don't think it gets better than that.

I loved acting, which was never about money, the fame. It was about a search for meaning. It was painful.

I would do theatre till I die. Theatre keeps your honesty alive. You can't pollute yourself. You learn a lot, and you use theatre techniques in life.