Rehearsals Quotes

There is no definitive list of the duties of a stage manager that is applicable to all theaters and staging environments. Regardless of specific duties, however, the stage manager is the individual who accepts responsibility for the smooth running of rehearsals and performances, on stage and backstage. ~ Laurence Sterne

I saw a lot of operas from backstage and watched a lot of rehearsals - my parents were singers. ~ Rosamund Pike

Years ago - I used to be an actor - I was in a production of Vaclav Havel's 'Temptation,' and when we started rehearsals, he was in prison. When we closed the show, he was running for president. And it felt incredibly timely and important and also this lucky thing. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

The life of any musician really doesn't fall into a normal schedule at all. Every week there are different rehearsals, different days and nights of performances, so we don't have a particular pattern that we can follow. For a conductor, it is a little bit worse because we have to allow for traveling. ~ Leonard Slatkin

My education was doing good plays and also stinkers. When you do a stinker, you learn how to act. I like having to audition. It's nice to do rehearsals. But it's with an audience that you get to love it! ~ Jeffrey Tambor

I don't think of it so much as the shows I did or the film sets. I mean, sometimes you'll get a nice location, but it's more, 'Who am I meeting on a day-to-day basis?' Often the rehearsals are a lot more fun than the show itself. ~ Joshua Sasse

And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackens, that his life had consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order, and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it. ~ John Le Carre

Life ends, and that's part of what makes it special. What exists is here, in front of us, what we can see and touch and affect. Our lives are not dress rehearsals in which we plan and are tested in anticipation of the real show to come. This is it, the only performance we're going to get to give, and it is what we make of it. ~ Sean Carroll

We will have close to 3 months of rehearsals to learn about 30 songs. Frank usually rehearsed a band for at least 3 months. If it took him that long to be comfortable we probably would need double the amount, but It's just not financially possible to do so. ~ Dweezil Zappa

All they teach you in drama school is how to do stage fights and be a pain in rehearsals. ~ Craig Ferguson

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting. ~ Emily Mortimer

Good diet and exercise are key, but abject fear has its own rewards. And arriving on the first day for rehearsals for 'Spamalot' and seeing all these much younger, much fitter people, who I was going to be on stage with, became a catalyst for cutting out the more unhealthy aspects of my life. ~ Sanjeev Bhaskar

Stations and airports are rehearsals for separations by death. ~ Anais Nin

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred ~ Shaun Considine

Sometimes, rehearsals are not worth it if you do not have an accurate cast, and that is one of the most difficult parts about a film. ~ Javier Camara

My earliest influences would definitely be my father, just seeing him play in different bands and going to his shows and going to the rehearsals. You know what I'm saying, it was the typical story of a son looking up to his dad. So the years that my father was around, my father was my biggest influence. ~ Jon Connor

Sometimes it depends on the actor or the actress. Sometimes they demand a lot of rehearsals. Sometimes they don't. Making movies is not like making a play, so I guess you can leave some of the work for improvisation when they do the work. ~ Alejandro Amenabar

Rehearsals and this band are two words that don't really go together, kinda like Military Intelligence. ~ Jerry Cantrell

There is nothing harder than working 50 pages a day, working 16 hours a day, trying to be good with only shooting rehearsals. ~ Robert Kazinsky

It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.' ~ Trent Reznor

I learned more in the rehearsals for 'The Letter' than I have ever dreamed of know in the theater as a critic. If it doesn't make me a better critic, I'm an idiot. ~ Terry Teachout

When I go into 'You're the Worst,' I'm very glammed up, and my hair and makeup is va-va-voom. Now what I'm having fun with in 'Grease' is, honestly, I go to rehearsals with zero makeup. When I get pimples, I get excited about it, like 'Yay! It helps the character!' The frumpier and uglier and grosser, the better with Jan. ~ Kether Donohue

I've been quoting the book [on Peter Sutcliffe] constantly in rehearsals. Some members of the cast have stated their disapproval that it should even have been written. Some of the women have expressed more - disgust and anger. What are they saying? They'd prefer not to know, not to understand? They'd prefer certain areas of life to be censored? Isn't that partly what breeds the Sutcliffes and the Nilsens? ~ Antony Sher

You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people's interest in a movie and like that better than worrying about showing the tricks behind the curtain. ~ Jay Roach

I never imagined I'd go into acting, but I always loved drama, and when I was 16, I discovered the Library Theatre up the road. So I plucked up courage and asked if I could watch rehearsals. It was like Heaven. ~ Lesley Nicol

It's better not to try to learn all the lines by rote. It's a very bad idea, in fact. You have to do it by using the process, and as I say, the process is to learn during rehearsals, and that's how you'll do it. ~ Angela Lansbury

I feel a bit like when we came through the doors on the first day of rehearsals of that play, from that minute on, my whole life changed. ~ James Corden

The living together is very important in a way. It's important for writing. It wouldn't be important if we were like just getting other people's numbers together, we'd just have to meet at rehearsals, but writing is something almost completely different. ~ Steve Winwood

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap - and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and 'Heart Shaped Box' and stuff on 'In Utero' just happened that way. ~ Dave Grohl

Ivo van Hove is directing The Crucible, and rehearses in quite an unusual way. We started rehearsals last week and dived straight into the first act, like, five minutes after we all turned up. No warm-ups. We were very intensely immersed in that whole world on day one. It was quite surreal because I've never done any theater before. ~ Saoirse Ronan

I don't do a lot of rehearsal. I don't like rehearsals. I rehearse the day or morning. I spend one hour and a half with all the actors, and we go over the scenes, and we change it and change the dialogue, and we do a lot of things to it, but prior to shooting, I don't really rehearse. ~ Susanne Bier

Any man who undertakes to write a play is either a damned fool or a hero, I don't know which. When you write a book, you pull it out of the typewriter and that's that. When you write a play you've got to go on with the producer and the director and the actors and the rehearsals and the ... ~ Rex Stout

Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals. ~ Larry Hagman

When you become old ... When you become old, you find yourself auditioning for the role of a lifetime; then, after interminable rehearsals, you're finally starring in a horror film--a talentless, irresponsible, and above all low-budget horror film, in which (as is the way with horror films) they're saving the worst for last. ~ Martin Amis

Who knows what hellish future lies ahead? ... Actually, I do. I've seen the rehearsals, ~ Terry Wogan

At St. Francis de Sales in Atlanta, we do not have an organ. We do not have rehearsals during the week. We do not have a professional choir. ~ Richard Morris

Lady Gaga? She's cool! She works really hard. When we would have our dance rehearsals, she wasn't the singer that was like, 'Oh, I'll just stand in front.' She wanted to learn everything - she was doing the dance moves. She's a good dancer. ~ Caity Lotz

I write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to use the language a great deal and carry on rehearsals in French. ~ Twyla Tharp

We are all from different cultures. Heath's [Ledger] Australian, really. I'm from here. Ang's [Lee] from China. But I think Ang gets very close in preproduction and rehearsals. And then he allows his actors - I don't think scared of actors, but I think he's scared of getting in on the scenes he's watching. The space he's watching. So he just totally disconnects from you while you're shooting. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

'Clybourne Park' was my first job after the birth of my son, who was 11 weeks old when we started rehearsals. And while that was truly harder than anything I've ever done, I was grateful every day to be going to work on such an incredible play, with such a generous, intelligent, supportive group of people. ~ Annie Parisse

I never seem to know what's going on ... Right from the very start, my life has been strange. I think I know what happened ... I must have missed all the rehearsals. ~ Charles M. Schulz

So, he eagerly drove from Basel to Bayreuth before the festival began to watch the last rehearsals of The Ring Cycle. As he watched, it hit him like Odin's bowel movement: the opera was shit. ~ Dylan Callens

collaborative teams think of common formative assessments as academic scrimmages or dress rehearsals. ~ Robert Eaker

If I'm not mistaken, I believe it was written beforehand. And it just happened in rehearsals Basically giving each person their vocal-line and I ended up getting that line! I'm so grateful I did because it was really special to sing that and you feel something when you sing it it's a very distinct piece that fits perfectly in the production. ~ Kendra Kassebaum

Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It's not the world that's the stage - it's social media, where you're trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online. ~ Lauren Beukes

Adaptability is crucial to working on Glee because every day is adapting to something. Because we're doing a different genre of music, doing a different type of scene with a different scene partner, recording and dance rehearsals ... no day is like another. ~ Kevin McHale

I've done films where we don't rehearse, and I've done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals. ~ Matthew McConaughey

There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything to others, but lose nothing of yourself. ~ Ian McEwan

Going to rehearsals of school plays got me out of science. It became clear what inspired me and what dampened my spirit. The only other thing I could do at school was trampolining - it didn't seem to have much future in it. ~ Tamsin Greig

That's opera! I just love it. It just thrills me! And it's very different than theatre, and sometimes it can be frustrating because when you come in the first day of rehearsals obviously you're an opera fan, right? ~ Jason Graae

To set out for rehearsals in that quivering quarter-hour is to engage conclusions, not beginnings, for one walks past the guilded hallucinations of poverty with a corrupt resignation touched by details, as if the destitute, in their orange-tinted back yards, under their dusty trees, or climbing into their favelas, were all natural scene designers and poverty were not a condition but an art. Deprivation is made lyrical, and twilight, with the patience of alchemy, almost transmutes despair into virtue. In the tropics nothing is lovelier than the allotments of the poor, no theater is as vivid, voluble, and cheap. ~ Derek Walcott

Most of the great directors I've worked with - De Palma, Spike Lee - like rehearsals. ~ John Leguizamo

My high school musical did not offer a shirtless Zac Efron but it did provide me with many lessons. I learned that I loved being in a theatre, attending rehearsals, and building sets. I loved listening to the director and groaning about rehearsing choreography ~ Amy Poehler

Rehearsals at the Silver Slipper's Burlesque Review had been brutal because of the physical toll on the body. Rehearsals for Cristos the Incredible were brutal because Cristos was an ass. ~ Kristen Painter

Big storms are the humble rehearsals of the Apocalypse. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

But if you look under the "girls gone wild" surface, which was easy for me to do since I was sover and actually below everyone wo formed that surface, ou could see that it was just a bunch of insecure teenagers guzzling alcohol and Kool-Aid from Dixie cups and freaking out about how "stressed out" they were about SATs and APs and rehearsals and auditions and résumé-padding efforts. ~ Rachel DeWoskin

'Five, Six, Seven, Nate!' opens on my 13-year-old protagonist packing up a duffel bag and bidding his Midwestern town goodbye, heading off to start rehearsals for his New York City debut in 'E.T.: The Musical.' ~ Tim Federle

My father, my uncles, my aunts, from my father's side and my mother's side ... they were all professional musicians. My father was a concert master, he took me to a lot of rehearsals, concerts, performances, opera, ballet. For me, that was life. ~ Lalo Schifrin

I've worked with actors who treat the first two takes like rehearsals. And that's okay. If the camera is on you and we're doing a scene where I'm off camera, I'm treating that as a rehearsal. ~ Alfred Molina

A lot of people don't really understand what rehearsal's about. People are afraid they're gonna leave it in the dressing room, or you're gonna shoot your wad in rehearsal. ~ Jeff Bridges

I have a very, very secret drive to become a dilettante, without the pejorative overtones or the obligation to produce myself. There's so much to examine, so much to contemplate. I have enormous enthusiasm when I start a new project but then there's the meetings and the counter-meetings, the rehearsals, the struggles. You have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get your dreams realised. ~ Peter Greenaway

When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

Whenever I've been in rehearsals, it's really fun, there's always laughing. ~ Adam Rapp

I love the performance of a craft, whether it is modest or mean-spirited, yet I walk away when discussions of it begin - as if one should ask a gravedigger what brand of shovel he uses or whether he prefers to work at noon or in moonlight. I am interested only in the care taken, and those secret rehearsals behind it. Even if I do not understand fully what is taking place. ~ Michael Ondaatje

You can only know how confident you are when you kick-start. True confidence is not found in excessive rehearsals; it comes from experience. Plan, prepare, but will willing to make it happen! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

I like to go for a certain over-the-top opulence when naming the drone pieces whereas the song titles are all about concision, I guess. I mean, if I were truly a purist, I'd call things, "Long Piece #27" or "Newest Fast Song", but I enjoy titling and it is helpful at rehearsals or when making set-lists. ~ David First

As a kid who wasn't into sports, at school I felt almost alienated at times, whereas in the theatre community there was this amazing sense of camaraderie. Early on, we would go to rehearsals with my dad and I was like the mascot for the backstage crew. That was a big part of my childhood, so I dreamed of one day doing a play in London. ~ Zach Braff

I must be the only person in 'Strictly' history who's actually put on weight during rehearsals. ~ Abbey Clancy

Ang Lee is very precise. He will show you everything, and will let you know what he is thinking about the whole project. There are a lot of rehearsals before shooting, and you already reach a certain standard. Then he will ask for more. ~ Tony Leung Chiu-Wai

The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots. ~ Alfred Jarry

At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one. ~ George S. Kaufman

they convinced me
i only had a few good years left
before i was replaced by a girl younger than me
as though men yield power with age
but women grow into irrelevance
they can keep their lies
for i have just gotten started
i feel as though i just left the womb
my twenties are the warm-up
for what i'm really about to do
wait till you see me in my thirties
now that will be a proper introduction
to the nasty. wild. woman in me.
how can i leave before the party's started
rehearsals begin at forty
i ripen with age
i do not come with an expiration date
and now
for the main event
curtains up at fifty
let's begin the show ~ Rupi Kaur

Then it's settled," Harriet said. "We shall work out the smaller roles later."
"What about you?" Elizabeth demanded.
"Oh, I'm going to be the goddess of the sun and moon."
"The tale gets stranger and stranger," Daniel said.
"Just wait until act seven," Miss Wynter told him.
"Seven?" His head snapped up. "There are seven acts?"
"Twelve," Harriet corrected, "but don't worry, you're in only eleven of them. Now then, Miss Wynter, when do you propose that we begin our rehearsals? And may we do so out of doors? There is a clearing by the gazebo that would be ideal. ~ Julia Quinn

In film, I find it very useful always to do some preparation before you start rehearsals or start shooting, because there's so much that's against you on a film set. ~ Ben Whishaw

The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong. ~ Henry Mintzberg

If only I could dream of you. Sometimes I do. But not often enough. Dreams are like practice runs and mini-rehearsals; they tell us what we'll do, when to ask, how we'll touch when the time comes, if the time comes. ~ Andre Aciman

Michael was very specific during rehearsals. When he was pleased, he always had this charming grin. ~ Madeleine Stowe

I love rehearsals and I love creating a character, sticking with it until you have something to tell. It's always different though. Sometimes a director will tell you from day one what they want. Then you throw in your idea. ~ Gael Garcia Bernal

I loved having a crew. I loved being the person who woke at six in the morning and knew where to put the camera. I loved watching the actresses cry, and to know that if you were clever and didn't do too many rehearsals, that it just came that way. ~ Jane Birkin

Once rehearsals are done the writer really doesn't have a function on the set. If the script is stabilized, then the writer becomes a celebrity tourist visiting the set, trying not to get in the way. It's very good for the ego, to go visit a film set if you are the writer, because they give you a special chair, and tell you where you can sit to watch the monitor. They make you feel special, but at the same time, they make it perfectly plain that you are irrelevant! ~ Tom Stoppard

An ex-ABT ballerina, while staging a ballet for the company, once followed a dancer into the bathroom to deliver notes through the stall door. She was known to bark - literally, like a dog - during private rehearsals. ~ Sascha Radetsky

I also call my family and see what's going on with them before I start my day with interviews, rehearsals, or anything else. I just want to do everything well and still be there for my husband and children. I am so grateful for my family because they are so understanding. I can't take all of the credit; it's a team effort. ~ Heather Headley

Rehearsals are one of my favourite things in the world. ~ Martin Freeman

The more and more that you dance, the easier it gets, and the more you can push yourself and do more rehearsals. ~ Jonathan Bennett

Cabin Fever was murder. There was a lot of psychological stress, like not knowing if we were going to finish the movie. The day we arrived to start rehearsals, our main investors pulled out. ~ Rider Strong

After a couple of rehearsals and a couple of takes, Sydney Pollack says, "Come here. Why are you not nervous?" And I [say], "Do you think it would be better if I was nervous?" And he says, "No, it's just I can't understand it - how you would be first time on a set, you're acting, when he flubs his line you make up a new line. It's very interesting." It's not that I think I'm great; that's what I knew I wanted to do. ~ Geena Davis

A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene he heard the void filled with applause and, through a rift in a side scene, saw the simple body before which he had acted magically deformed, the void of faces breaking at all points and falling asunder into busy groups. ~ James Joyce

I miss that process of getting the script and reading it and working on it. Every actor has their own way of memorizing their lines, and the whole process of starting to work with the other actors and the director, and doing rehearsals, and going to the location, and going through wardrobe. ~ Pauly Shore

Sickness is a benign rehearsal for death. With luck, some other understudy will go on in your stead before your final bow becomes inevitable. ~ Stewart Stafford

We had about seven real cats at any one time on the set, and two animatronic, (one that sits and one that lays down) and two stuffed animal type cats that we used for rehearsals or any sort of silly torture we had to instill on the poor guy. ~ Melissa Joan Hart

Rehearsal? What's that? Rehearsal's for fags. Rehearsal. Not much. ~ Brett Ratner

She remembers rehearsals. Wrong notes turning to right ones, dissonance becoming harmony. She remembers "O Holy Night" sounding so perfect, in the end, her voice wrapping itself around Jonah's like they were created just for this. She remembers his smile at her from across their shared mic.
She remembers getting asked to reprise her duet with Jonah a year later. Just after everything happened with Luke. But then Mr. Boyden took her aside. Told her that Jonah had backed out. He'd said he was too busy for extra rehearsals, but she knew: it was because of her. She saw it in Jonah's face, in the way he avoided her eyes. She saw it in everyone else's faces too. She was a bullet he'd just dodged.
She remembers standing up for the solo she was given instead - her last performance before she quit choir. She remembers opening her mouth, nothing coming out. She'd cleared her throat, tried again. Her voice emerged, but all wrong: small and shaky and sharp. With everyone looking at her, with the rumors still swirling, she felt exposed. She felt small and shaky and sharp. Vulnerable, but made of angles and thorns. ~ Kathryn Holmes

The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff. ~ Stephen Sondheim

Open rehearsals reach people who might not otherwise hear the Philharmonic - people on fixed incomes, people who can't move easily at night, students. ~ Zubin Mehta

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character. ~ John Malkovich

I remember when we were in rehearsals and we were going through it, because we rehearsed before we went to Toronto, and it's more of the same. She and I had to deal with a lot of stuff in this movie and we really have to take ourselves there. It actually started in rehearsals, and just revisiting that piece of it all. Just the way Monica is and what she says and the way she looks at me, it really affects me throughout rehearsals and throughout the scenes. ~ Morris Chestnut

I wasn't into anything at school. I used to get really embarrassed. I used to get asked to do performing things, and I'd go to all the rehearsals, and then I'd pretend to be ill on the day I had to actually perform. I was very unhappy at school. ~ Lily Allen

I've a long time trying to love
a brother whose only way of touching me is pain.
A long time escaping into music.
Practice, lessons, rehearsals that protect me
from the hurting parts of life.
I've been winning awards, applause,
acclaim for my trumpets since I was in grade school.
But love?
The word catches in my throat.
Do I love anything?
Have i forgotten how? ~ Stasia Ward Kehoe

On indies it's hard to do, but in rehearsals, you make mistakes in rehearsal. It's really hard rehearsing a play or what rehearsal you get on any movie. That's where you get to make your mistakes, and you make big ones. So when you shoot [the movie] or you finally get the play in shape and do it, the mistakes are out of the way. If you're not afraid to make mistakes, then there is no writer's block or actor's block. ~ Jeff Daniels

Artie travels all the time. The rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time. He didn't want to do the show with my band; he just wanted me on acoustic guitar. ~ Paul Simon