Playwright Quotes - Page 8

• I don't want to be a playwright, I want to be a rock and roll star.

  Sam Shepard

  Stars, Rocks, Rock And Roll

  Sam Shepard (1997). “Plays”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do come from a theater background, where the playwright is optimal and king and you have to serve the playwright. So I am, of course, a huge fan of scripted everything.

  Skylar Astin

  Kings, Fans, Theater

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The playwright's rendition of Abraham Lincoln remembers a pitiful little paddlewheel he saw that he could only generate steam to EITHER blow the ship's whistle OR move the wheel. Just as the little ship could not do both, Lincoln fears that very few can actually think and speak at the same time.

  Norman Corwin

  Moving, Thinking, Blow

  8 Copy quote

• By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

  Arthur Miller

  Business, Drama, Passion

  Arthur Miller (2009). “Miller Plays: 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge”, p.53, A&C Black

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's very hard to be a playwright because it's very competitive.

  Jesse Eisenberg

  Hard

  4 Copy quote

• A conventional playwright tries to tell you more about the characters than they know about themselves.

  Timothy West

  Character, Trying, Knows

  "The Birthday Party is 50", www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically.

  Timothy West

  Class, Elizabethan, Areas

  35 Copy quote

• Remember that you are an actor in a play, and that the Playwright chooses the manner of it: If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well. The choice of the cast is Another's.

  Epictetus

  Business, Character, Men

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.502, Lulu.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair."

  Kenneth Tynan

  Indulge In, Luxury, Despair

  "Conference at Edinburgh (1963)". "Tynan Right and Left: Plays, Films, People, Places and Events". Book by Kenneth Tynan, p. 146, 1967.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always felt it a great privilege to be in the theater, and I am grateful to all the playwrights who have given me so many wonderful roles. It's a terrifying business, but it has its compensations. Where else could I have found someone who for 50 years has given me sheer enchantment?

  Alfred Lunt

  Grateful, Found Someone, Years

  6 Copy quote

• Theatre is a mirror, a sharp reflection of society. The greatest playwrights are moralists.

  Yasmina Reza

  Reflection, Mirrors, Theatre

  "Yasmina Reza: 'There's no point in writing theatre if it's not accessible'". Interview with Elizabeth Day, www.theguardian.com. January 21, 2012.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can make a killing as a playwright in America, but you can't make a living.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Work, America, Killing

  4 Copy quote

• The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

  Joseph Weizenbaum

  Powerful, Battle, Directors

  14 Copy quote

• In this land of unlimited opportunity, a place where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, any man or woman can realize greatness as a patient or as a doctor, we have only one commercial American filmmaker who consistently speaks with his own voice. That is Woody Allen, gag writer, musician, humorist, philosopher, playwright, stand-up comic, film star, film writer and film director.

  Vincent Canby

  Stars, Opportunity, Greatness

  The New York Times, July 17, 1983.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's always the danger that there are so damn many things that a playwright can examine in this society of ours - things that have less to do with his artistic work than have to do with the critical and aesthetic environment - that perhaps he does have to worry about whether or not he is writing too fast. But then also, perhaps he should worry about getting as many plays on as possible before the inevitable ax falls.

  Edward Albee

  Fall, Writing, Play

  4 Copy quote

• A play has two authors, the playwright and the actor.

  Eric Bentley

  Play, Two, Theatre

  Eric Bentley (1953). “In search of theater”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set. While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else. By doing this I sense instantly when something isn’t right. Watching something does not mean fixing your gaze on it, but being aware of it in a natural way. I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

  Akira Kurosawa

  Believe, Mean, Eye

  11 Copy quote

• Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs start to go wrong.

  Meredith Willson

  Writing, Play, Theatre

  4 Copy quote

• Some playwrights are obvious influences on younger writers. Arthur Miller (realistic, politically engaged dramas) and Christopher Durang (satirical dark comedies) are examples. But August stands apart, ... He has his special way of seeing things. I remember he and I were at one of those fancy benefits the Rep has. The gay men's chorus was singing, and I was very proud to have brought them into a Rep event. And August says, 'You know, I don't see any black people up there.' That was his focus the lives of black people.

  Daniel J. Sullivan

  Drama, Gay, Dark

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.

  Bob Dylan

  "Bob Dylan Sounds Off On The Origin Of His New Record, Parlor Music, Dr. Dre, And Who His Songs Are About". Interview with Bill Flanagan, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 20, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you examine the history of any playwright of the past twenty - five or thirty years - I'm not talking about the comedy boys, I'm talking about the more serious writers - it seems inevitable that almost every one has been encouraged until the critics feel that they have built them up beyond the point where they can control them; then it's time to knock them down again.

  Edward Albee

  Past, Boys, Talking

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.47, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I decided honestly that comic art is an art form in itself. It reflects the life and times more accurately and actually is more artistic than magazine illustration - since it is entirely creative. An illustrator works with camera and models; a comic artist begins with a white sheet of paper and dreams up his own business - he is playwright, director, editor and artist at once.

  Alex Raymond

  Dream, Art, Illustration

  Alex Raymond (1990). “Flash Gordon: Mongo, the planet of doom”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage.

  Edward Albee

  Writing, Play, Starting

  4 Copy quote

• Lighting is not about function. It's much more about the mood and the emotion that the playwright and the director are trying to create. Our job is to support their poetic direction.

  Jules Fisher

  Jobs, Support, Theatre

  12 Copy quote

• I see the playwright as a lay preacher peddling the ideas of his time in popular form.

  August Strindberg

  Ideas, Theatre, Form

  August Strindberg “Twelve Major Plays”, AldineTransaction

  10 Copy quote

  Show source