Portal:Theatre/Selected quote

Instructions

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The layout design for these subpages is at Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/Layout.

  1. Select a new quote attributed to a different individual than any of those currently quoted below.
  2. Add the new quote to the next available subpage, using the layout format from the link above.
  3. Add a citation of where the quote is documented. This should be placed on the subpage, below the quote layout template, and enclosed in <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags.
  4. Update "max=" to the new total for the "selected quote" {{Random portal component}} at Portal:Theatre.

If you are unsure or do not know how to add an entry, feel free to post a question, suggestion or nomination at Portal talk:Theatre.

Quote list

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Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/1

A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.
Edward Albee, New York Times interview, 1966

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/2

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, darling. Be an audience.
Tallulah Bankhead, 1952

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/3

One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.
Elbert Hubbard, from Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers, 1906

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/4

The secret of playwriting can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and whenever you can, cut.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/5

Often as he sneered at Plato, Aristotle never called him a playwright.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/6

The playwright of today likes to believe that he is throwing light upon his time, when his time is actually throwing light upon him.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/7

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/8

The theater is a great equalizer: it is the only place where the poor can look down on the rich.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/9

When they have a success, the producers think they are brilliant, but when they have a failure, they think the public are fools.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/10

A playwright is a lay preacher peddling the ideas of his time in popular form.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/11

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov, Christian Science Monitor, 1962

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/12

As far as my work is concerned [the ideal dramatic criticism is] unqualified appreciation.
Oscar Wilde, St James's Gazette interview, 1895

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/13

Musicals - a series of catastrophes ending with a floor show.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/14

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large number of people from coughing.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/15

Know your lines and don't bump into the furniture.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/16

Acting is standing up naked and turning around slowly.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/17

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

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/18

The business of the dramatist is to keep out of sight and let nothing appear but his characters.

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/19

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 ...

Portal:Theatre/Selected quote/20

Whoever condemns the theater is an enemy of his country.
Voltaire