Noh Theater Quotes

If formality and courtesy take over the feelings . . . how silly and meaningless these things could become. And despite all this, I still take part in it! ~ Fumio Obata

The best night of my life was watching the Japanese Noh theater. I've only seen it once, but even saying it now, I think, 'How can I ever have this experience again?' It was so mesmerizing, so complicated and so primordial; I could not believe it. ~ Vivienne Westwood

Great art projects a sense of inexhaustibility. In literature, particularly in poetry, this may be accomplished through ambiguity: Beneath each and every meaning that I can descry lie others, so that rereading holds out the prospect of new subtleties, inversions, secret codes and ineffabilities ~ William T. Vollmann

But then foreign critics right away made sweeping comparisons to haiku, noh theater, and directors like Ozu, as if the movie were somehow representative of Japan - which was, well, not what I was after. Similarly, with After Life, I deliberately set out to make a movie that was unlike what I imagined the foreign conception of Japan to be, and I figured non-Japanese wouldn't find it interesting at all. ~ Hirokazu Koreeda

Now I have something to tell you," her brother said. "Every time I've had to take part in anything with other people, something of genuine social concern, I've been like a man who steps outside the theater before the final act for a breath of fresh air, sees the great dark void with all those stars, and walks away, abandoning hat, coat and play. ~ Robert Musil

Democracy is not theater - it determines life and death! ~ Mimi Kennedy

Live theater is just an incredibly powerful medium, and I think anyone who goes, whether they know about it or not, if they see something that sort of fits with them, it's kind of hard to deny that they had a good time. ~ Harry Connick, Jr.

Was the war being fought to establish that Hitler was wrong in his ideas of white Nordic supremacy over "inferior" races? The United States' armed forces were segregated by race. When troops were jammed onto the Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old. ~ Howard Zinn

I did musicals in high school, certainly. And then I just kept wanting to do them. I felt at home in the theater, in that way that, you know, you're supposed to if that's the kind of person you are. ~ Jason Robert Brown

Everything influences playwrights. A playwright who isn't influenced is never of any use. ~ Arthur Miller

It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation. ~ Bertolt Brecht

The truth of the matter is, every film is imperfect. It's the nature of the beast. One of the things that people ask me all the time is, what's the difference between theater and film, and one of the biggest differences is, in the theater you always get another go. ~ Stephen Daldry

But it was not in Mr. Gruber's nature to look for reasons. That was why he was an ideal secretary. He had been given much fancier assignments in the past. Find out by six in the evening whether Hubermann played any Tschaikovsky after the first intermission of his concert in Brussels last year. Produce a narwhal tusk at least five feet long by eight o'clock Thursday morning. Buy, in your own name, the Domino Motion Picture Theater in Zurich. On Wednesday afternoon between five and six in the Café Meteor in Budapest, slap the face of a character known as Ervin Kugyec. A good secretary does not look for reasons but gets results. ~ Lajos Zilahy

The room was a machine that measured my condition: how much of me remained, how much of me was no longer there. I was both perpetrator and witness, both actor and audience in a theater of one. I could follow the progress of my own dismemberment. Piece by piece, I could watch myself dissapear. ~ Paul Auster

Trust me, there's not one night a week I'm not in a theater somewhere. I adore theater, and I go out with friends, so I do have some nights off. ~ Joan Rivers

I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go. ~ Michael Douglas

Everything in life is theater. ~ Margo Jones

I come from classical theater training and when I went to college it was a bunch of kids that were hand-picked from around the world. I was around such brilliant young minds and incredible artists with incredible teachers. ~ Joe Manganiello

She rushed out, because the darkness in the theater was too much when combined with the darkness in her head . ~ Susanna Kaysen

I've worked with a lot of great glamorous girls in movies and the theater. And I'll admit, I've often thought it would be wonderful to be a femme fatale. But then I'd always come back to thinking that if they only had what I've had - a family, real love, an anchor - they would have been so much happier during all the hours when the marquees and the floodlights are dark. ~ Eve Arden

I'd done some acting in high school. Then I went to Kenyon College and got thrown in jail and kicked off the football team. Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years. Got my degree in speech; they didn't actually have a degree in theater. I graduated at two o'clock in the afternoon, and at three-thirty I was on the train for Williams Bay, Wisconsin, for summer stock, and then I did winter stock. ~ Paul Newman

I still get excited performing live. when you see the immediate reaction from a crowd, its like being a theater performer, its something you can't get from being a writer or being an ad man ... its almost ritualistic. ~ Marilyn Manson

I actually love going to a lot of theater movies. I just love watching actors work and seeing how people tell stories. ~ Zeljko Ivanek

she'd left, feeling the emptiness of the big theater ~ Anthony Doerr

D.H. Lawrence had the impression – that psychoanalysis was shutting sexuality up in a bizarre sort of box painted with bourgeois motifs, in a kind of rather repugnant artificial triangle, thereby stifling the whole of sexuality as a production of desire so as to recast it along entirely different lines, making of it a 'dirty little secret', a dirty little family secret, a private theater rather than the fantastic factory of nature and production ~ Gilles Deleuze

I feel like if I am physically and emotionally able to be at the theater, I will be there. I don't like not being there - I don't like playing hooky. I am just one of those people who feels really, really guilty if I am not there - maybe it's part of being Catholic. ~ Lea Salonga

I come from a traditional theater background. ~ Mark Ruffalo

As a teenager, I wanted to write novels. By college, it was theater, plays, and then, shortly, it was film. ~ Richard Linklater

Will the theater disappear? No. Is it healthy? Also no. ~ Emanuel Azenberg

I didn't really know much about the Houdinis when I started. As soon as they sent me the script, I wanted to find out everything I could about Bess. Luckily, I have a really wonderful friend named Michael Mitnick, who's a writer. He was a magician as a child, and that led him to the theater, which led to drama school, and he writes films now. Magic was really his thing, growing up, so he put me in touch with his magic teacher who is a real Houdini expert. ~ Kristen Connolly

Theater, I suppose, is a form of mass mesmerism, and if that's the case, Shakespeare, despite his chemical shortcomings, was surely one of the greatest hypnotists who ever lived. ~ Alan Bradley

Although I performed in high school, my first real experience with theater was performing with a student-run organization at Vanderbilt University called The Original Cast where I learned that I loved performing and especially loved theater people. ~ Nancy Allen

The oldest form of theater is the dinner table. It's got five or six people, new show every night, same players. Good ensemble; the people have worked together a lot. ~ Michael J. Fox

He closed the fridge door, made his last breakfast - scrambled eggs - and showered, dressed, combed his hair, left for the theater an hour early so he'd have time to linger with the newspaper over his second-to-last coffee at his favorite coffee place, all of the small details that comprise a morning, a life. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Everything changes once you start trying to market the film. Part of you feels like everything is slipping away from you. For me, I don't want people going to the theater thinking it's going to be a laugh-a-minute comedy, like a Will Ferrell film or something. Because it's not. ~ Taika Waititi

Listen to me, Bill," Richard said. "Let the librarian be your new best friend. If you like what she's given you to read, trust her. The library, the theater, a passion for novels and plays - well, Bill, this could be the door to your future. At your age, I lived in a library! Now novels and plays are my life. ~ John Irving

It's great to work in film and TV, and I love it, but there's nothing that can replace that instantaneous storytelling you get in theater. ~ Pablo Schreiber

Everybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. ~ Bassem Youssef

Here in America, every single actor, since they were little boys, they sing and dance and perform like angels. We don't do that. We are actors who work in a theater in very classic performances or plays. ~ Javier Camara

Kids now are so used to surround sound and the power in theater speakers, that the concert hall is a disappointment to them. ~ David Ogden Stiers

First I wanted to be an ice skater, and then I saw 'Bye, Bye Birdie,' and everything changed. I'm glad I learned through the process of theater. ~ Liza Minnelli

Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment. It is a criticism. ~ Alan Jay Lerner

I like roles that are on the extreme ends of the spectrum, and there's special appeal in exploring these slightly forgotten plays that people might think of as subjects for academic term papers instead of live theater. ~ Geoffrey Rush

Getting work in theater has always been sort of cyclical. ~ Estelle Parsons

I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater. ~ Daniela Bobadilla