Theatre Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old theatre quotes, theatre sayings, and theatre proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

There is that smaller world which is the stage, and that larger stage which is the world. Isaac Goldberg
The theatre is an escape from reality. George Jean Nathan
The theatre is the first serum that man invented to protect himself from the sickness of despair. Jean-Louis Barrault
The theatre is not so much a profession as a disease, and my first look at Broadway was the beginning of a lifelong infection. Moss Hart
The basis of drama is any form or rhythm imposed upon the world of action. T.S. Eliot
Theatre is what literature does at night. George Jean Nathan
Theatre: poor stepsister of the arts. Philip Sidney
One goes to the theatre to find life, but if there is no difference between life outside the theatre and life inside, then theatre makes no sense. There's no point doing it. Peter Brook
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Oscar Wilde
[Theatre] exists not just to make a mirror of life, but to represent a kind of realm just as certainly as music is a realm. Joseph Chaikin
Theatre takes place all around us and it is the purpose of the formal theatre to remind us this is so. John Cage
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. Alfred Hitchcock
Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. Albert Camus
How can the theatre be both entertaining and instructive at the same time? Bertolt Brecht
The technical word used to bring out a play was "to teach," and the technical name for the director of the performance was didascalus or "teacher." Roy Flickinger
The function of the theatre is not to teach, but to pose questions. The worst thing is when social and moral teachings come from the stage. When there is already an answer. it ceases to be theatre. George Toustonogov
The business of plays is to recommend virtue and discountenance vice; to shew the uncertainty of human greatness, the sudden turns of fate, and the unhappy conclusions of violence and injustice. Jeremy Collier
All disobedience to the creative life of the theatre is a crime. Konstantin Stanislavsky
I think the job of art by and large at the moment, especially the theatre, is not to reconcile people, but to disturb them, to hassle them, to shake them out of their complacencies. Edward Bond
My main concern is theatre; and the theatre does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish and it has to do better. Anna Deavere Smith
I have faith in theatre as the place where a community hears words that they can accept or reject, words that might help them to make decisions about their personal lives and their social responsibilities. Giorgio Strehler
The subject of every play ought to be that men change. Jean-Paul Sartre
I wasn't in the theatre to be entertained—I was in it to be changed. Rosemarie Tichler
Truth is theatre is just as chameleon-like as in real life. Actually, there is no truth in theatre or in any other medium of performance; there is only its illusion. Hume Cronyn
The last holy brothel is the theatre; the last holy prostitute is the actor. Athol Fugard
To my mind the modern theatre is nothing but tradition and conventionality... We need new forms, and if we can't have them we're better off with no theatre at all. (Konstantin) Anton Chekhov
I don't think the traditional form of theatre means anything any longer. Its significance is purely historic. Bertolt Brecht
All through the world in order to save the theatre almost everything of the theatre still has to be swept away. Peter Brook
We never have enough good plays, and the reason for that is we don't have enough bad plays. If we had a lot more bad plays, then we might have a few more good plays. The history of the theatre is the history of bad plays. Harold Clurman
Where Aristotle fails us as a theatre critic is in saying excessively little about acting and staging. A.C. Ward