Theater Quotes

Theater is a very changeable art. It responds to the moment in history the way the newspaper does, and there’s no predicting what to come up with next.

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.

The theater is so endlessly fascinating – because it’s so accidental. It’s so much like life.

Since time immemorial, the theatre’s business has been to entertain people, just like all the other arts. This business always gives it its particular dignity; it needs no other passport than fun, though this it must have.[Seit jeher ist es das Geschäft des Theaters, wie aller andern Künste auch, die Leute zu unterhalten. Dieses Geschäft verleiht ihm immer seine besondere Würde, es benötigt keinen anderen Ausweis als den Spaß, diesen freilich unbedingt.]

In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

Great drama is great questions or it is nothing but technique. I could not imagine a theater worth my time that did not want to change the world.