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I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least.
EUGENE IONESCO, Notes and Counter Notes
It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.
CHARLES DICKENS, Nicholas Nickleby
It is Mystery -- the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand as the meaning of any event -- or accident -- in any life on earth ... [that] I want to realize in the theatre. The solution, if there ever be any, will probably have to be produced in a test tube and turn out to be discouragingly undramatic.
A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.
DARIO FO, Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1997
When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world." If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.
DAVID MAMET, Three Uses of the Knife
It has not been definitively proved that the language of words is the best possible language. And it seems that on the stage, which is above all a space to fill and a place where something happens, the language of words may have to give way before a language of signs whose objective aspect is the one that has the most immediate impact upon us.
ANTONIN ARTAUD, The Theatre and Its Double
Applause begets applause in the theatre, as laughter begets laughter and tears beget tears.
CLAYTON HAMILTON, Theory of the Theatre
From the start it has been the theatre's business to entertain people ... it needs no other passport than fun.
BERTOLT BRECHT, A Short Organum for the Theatre
Two strongly influential movements--naturalism and absurdism--have polarized western theatre, arguing respectively for a tidy global perspective of human behavior or for an idiosyncratic local vision, in which ultimately no human behavioral patterns can be abstracted. One is left to choose between existence represented as strict linear determinism or as utter randomness.
WILLIAM DEMASTES, Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition
I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing -- his sense of personal dignity.
ARTHUR MILLER, "Tragedy and the Common Man"
There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made.
EDWARD ALBEE, WNBC TV interview, Jan. 9, 1966
The drama is not dead but liveth, and contains the germs of better things.
WILLIAM ARCHER, About the Theatre
The most effective moments in the theatre are those that appeal to basic and commonplace emotions--love of woman, love of home, love of country, love of right, anger, jealousy, revenge, ambition, lust, and treachery.
CLAYTON HAMILTON, Theory of the Theatre
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
EUGENE IONESCO, Notes and Counter Notes
Given technological developments in virtual reality and communications, it is not clear what, if any, purpose will be served by live theatre in the not-too-distant future. Postmodern theory sees theatre as a quaint and marginalized activity in a wired world, and ... whether live theatre even really exists anymore. Some of you may dream of seeing your name up in lights on a theatre marquee, but if you are really looking for fame and fortune shouldn't you be studying film at least, or television arts, or computers? What is it about theatre that remains compelling for you? Is it just because it's there?
MARK FORTIER, Theory Theatre and Introduction
Theatre is not and should not be a literary form of expression. A theatrical celebration can take place anywhere: out of doors, in a garage, in a stable. The problem with avant-garde theatre today is that it is absolutely intellectual. You have to be cerebrally inclined to understand what is going on.
JEROME SAVARY, quoted in James Roose Evans' Experimental Theatre
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
TOM STOPPARD, interview, March 10, 1999
The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play, not words on paper, nor thoughts and ideas of an author, those shabby things snatched off basement counters at Gimbel's.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, Afterword to Camino Real
It is remarkable how virtuous and generously disposed everyone is at a play. We uniformly applaud what is right and condemn what is wrong, when it costs us nothing but the sentiment.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characteristics
The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.
BERTOLT BRECHT, On Theatre
From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theatre, aside from any aesthetic value, may be considered as an institution for the treatment of the mass complex.
CARL JUNG, Psychology of the Unconscious
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