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.

Drama has to do with circumstance, tragedy has to do with individual choice. David Mamet
The play was a great success, but the audience was a total failure. Oscar Wilde
Welcome to the Theatre, / To the magic, to the fun! / Where painted trees and flowers grow, / And laughter rings fortissimo, / And treachery's sweetly done. Lee Adams
The difficulty about a theatre job is that it inteferes with party-going. Barry Humphries
If any play has been produced only twice in three hundred years, there must be some good reason for it. Rupert Hart-Davis
I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions—the curtain was up. Groucho Marx
We open in Venice, / We next play Verona, / Then on to Cremona. / Lotsa laughs in Cremona. Cole Porter
The theatre seems to be chronically twenty years behind, regardless of realism, as the relation of Beckett to Joyce, for example show. The theatre feeds on the novel; never vice versa: think of the hundreds of dramatizations of novels, and then try to think of a book that was "novelized" for a play. There is not even a word for it. Mary Mccarthy
Then to the well-trod stage anon, / If Jonson's learned sock be on, / Or sweetest Shakespeare fancy child, / Warble his native wood-notes wild. John Milton
Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis. James Agate
Good plays drive bad playgoers crazy. Brooks Atkinson
Anyone can do theatre. Even actors. And theatre can be done everywhere. Even in a theatre. Augusto Boal
You've got to perform in a role hundreds of times. In keeping it fresh one can become a large, madly humming, demented refrigerator. Ralph Richardson
I’m really very sorry for you all, but it’s an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances. W.S. Gilbert
I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theatre is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture. Laurence Olivier
Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your reflexes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear, the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy. Clive Swift
The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomime. Iris Murdoch
Theatre is the art form of the present: it exists only in the present, and then it’s gone. Simon McBurney
Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to. Willem Dafoe
Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces. Andrew Lloyd Webber
Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that. Mary Pickford
All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts. William Shakespeare
We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. Tom Stoppard