Improvisation Theatre Quotes

Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in. ~ William Shakespeare

There was no real fringe theatre in London until way after the war, so either a play was done secretly with a club licence or it was done openly and had to be assessed along with everything else. ~ Timothy West

I started improvisation at age nine, and I loved it so much I stuck with it. As a by-product, acting was just something I was lucky enough to fall into. ~ Cassie Steele

I love improvisation. You can't blame it on the writers. You can't blame it on direction. You can't blame it on the camera guy ... It's you. You're on. You've got to do it, and you either sink or swim with what you've got. ~ Jonathan Winters

There are so many huge roles in the theatre: if you've got the option to play Hedda Gabler on stage, why wouldn't you choose that over a three-line part in a Hollywood film as somebody's maid or somebody's wife or somebody's best friend? ~ Eve Best

July 8, 2013
Review of Bargain with the Devil
Author: Gloria Gravitt Moulder
My interest in the death of Margaret Mitchell was sparked as a young child growing up in Georgia. I was born in 1953, 4 years after her death. Older relatives, neighbors and friends would sit around discussing her death as I was growing up and with the inquisitive mind of a young child; I found what they were saying interesting enough to listen in. They talked about how the taxi cab driver, Hugh Gravitt, (some of which knew him as this was a small southern town where everyone knew everyone) was not a drinker because of his health and how the newspaper articles had written he was drunk and speeding when it wasn't true. I overheard many things about how the media was wrong regarding the circumstances of her death. Some speculated she committed suicide; others suspected her husband pushed her in front of the car Mr. Gravitt was driving. All commented that both Margaret and John were drunk and jaywalking across Peachtree Street.
I read the book (Gone with the Wind) when I was 13 and went to see the movie in 1969 at the Fox theatre with friends. I cannot relate how this impacted me. I became interested in all I heard as a child again and over the years have read many articles on the subject of Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh. I never believed the stories about Hugh Gravitt being at fault in her death as a result of all those conversations I had overheard by my elders as a child.
~ Gloria Gravitt Moulder

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17. ~ Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders. ~ Edward Abbey

I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance. ~ David Bowie

History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background. ~ Thomas Carlyle

When I was in college, all the pretty women were in the theatre, so I auditioned for a play. ~ Judd Nelson

Is she perverted like me? Would she go down on you in a theatre? ~ Alanis Morissette

The Theatre of the Absurd, in the sense that it is truly the contemporary theatre, facing as it does man's condition as it is, is the Realistic theatre of our time; and that the supposed Realistic theatre - the term used here to mean most of what is done on Broadway - in the sense that it panders to the public need for self-congratulation and reassurance and presents a false picture of ourselves to ourselves is ... really and truly The Theatre of the Absurd. ~ Edward Albee

I'd auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and I didn't get a place and it was terrifying. ~ Matthew Macfadyen

The repetition of the theatre means you've got the time to get deeply inside the person you're playing. ~ Sophie Okonedo

The theatre, like the fresco, is art fitted to its place. And therefore it is above all else the human art, the living art. ~ Romain Rolland

I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high school. It was a really nice place. There was a New Directions paperback. It was the Pound/Fenollosa book, 'The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan.' ~ William T. Vollmann

To be honest I don't think I was any great shakes as a theatre actor because everything I was doing was really small in size - intimate. ~ Robert Carlyle

I find that actors who are wanting to pursue tv or films don't seem to have much interest in classical theatre. ~ Renee O'Connor

Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into the confidence of passions on which she fixed just the stare she might have had for images bounding across the wall in the slide of a magic-lantern. Her little world was phantasmagoric - strange shadows dancing on a sheet. It was as if the whole performance had been given for her - a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre. She was in short introduced to life with a liberality in which the selfishness of others found its account, and there was nothing to avert the sacrifice but the modesty of her youth. ~ Henry James

I look around and see that many - not all, but many - problems we've got could be solved if our culture simply fostered the habit of reading. Reading books of science, philosophy, history. Reading literature of quality, the sort that touches us because of a more profound reason, such as, for instance, because it's got something to say beyond all the futilities and trifles of life, even while depicting the ordinary in life, at the same time that it says it with style, in a unique, admirable manner. An original one.


We are not a county of readers, notwithstanding. We are the country of football turned into a cult, of guile being ranked high as a cardinal virtue, of Carnival made for exportation. A country where there are more letters in political party acronyms than in all many of our politicians have written in a lifetime. A country where ethics has become a joke theme. Where democracy is but a ridiculous puppet theatre.

Yes, I look around and see that many problems could be solved if we had the habit of reading. But I am not even sure whether there is someone reading these words. ~ Camilo Gomes Jr.

My family were broadminded enough to support me when I wanted to pursue a life in the theatre. ~ Peter Gallagher

Doing gigs is great, but when you come together for a production in the theatre, that is something I have a lot of respect for. ~ Eliza Doolittle

I would love to do more theatre, musicals ... everything. ~ Chris Pine

Chess and theatre often lead to madness. ~ Fernando Arrabal

When you come into the theatre, 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

If you go back to the roots of jazz, it was all about COLLECTIVE improvisation. ~ Henry Threadgill

You can't remember what movie you saw two weeks ago, but you can remember what Broadway show you saw two weeks ago and where you ate dinner - everything about it. There's something about live theatre that hits you in the heart. ~ Susan Stroman

The first rule of good theatre is 'Show, don't tell.' It applies to good political action as well. ~ Carne Ross

Telly and films has been my thing, not necessarily by choice, and if the right piece of theatre came along, I would jump at it. ~ Darren Boyd

There is a whole bunch of great British actors of my age who aren't film stars or theatre actors; they're very much both. ~ Harry Lloyd

The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped / on a seat and now it is lying in the alley behind / the theatre where my play is echoed by dying voices. ~ Frank O'Hara

I've loved every minute of every hour I've spent doing theatre. ~ Laurie Metcalf

I was called to audition for a play when I was very young, following which I continued to act as well as write and direct. When I moved to Delhi and joined Hindu College, theatre became a very big part of my life. ~ Imtiaz Ali

You've got to have fun playing. It bothers me when players don't seem to be enjoying themselves, even when they play an incredible improvisation. ~ Rufus Reid

The frivolity with which all theatrical activity is conducted has one consoling feature-there are no rules of behavior that apply regularly to any part of the theatre. ~ Moss Hart

We don't want bores in the theatre. We don't want standardised acting, standard actors with standard-shaped legs. Acting needs everybody, cripples, dwarfs and people with noses so long. Give us something that is different. ~ Sybil Thorndike

We had our British background of traditional theatre behind us. ~ Peter Capaldi

When football stars disappear, so do the teams, and that is a very curious phenomenon. It is like in the theatre, in a play, where there is a great star. If the star is not well, the whole cast suffers. ~ Pele