A Quote by Anna Deavere Smith

My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.

Anna Deavere Smith

Quote Topics

Been Better Concern Does Main Mirror Reflect Selfish Society Stingy Theater

Quote Author

Anna Deavere Smith
American - Actress
Born: September 18, 1950

I have always been interested in theater, as an actor and as someone who looks upon theater - at the risk of sounding pretentious - as an icon by which we measure society... My life has been in the theater to an extent. It's only an extension to write, direct, produce, whatever.

Wayne Rogers

A nation that does not support and encourage its theater is - if not dead - dying; just as a theater that does not capture with laughter and tears the social and historical pulse, the drama of its people, the genuine color of the spiritual and natural landscape, has no right to call itself theater; but only a place for amusement.

Federico Garcia Lorca

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.

Laura Linney

I'm constantly involved in theater, looking at theater, trying to do work in theater, support theater. And that's kind of my creative passion.

Scott Bakula

I've been working in theater, really, since about 1965. I started working with the Mabou Mines about then, and in a way I've always worked in the theater, but it's never been a main part of my work. And it wasn't until Einstein that I kind of shifted into high gear with theater, working with Bob, with Bob Wilson. And since then I find it a very attractive form to work in. It's just an extension of my work.

Philip Glass

I'm a very shy person, and I never tried to do theater. I've been asked many, many times by the most incredible authors in America to do theater. And I always said no, not knowing what it is to be on the stage and to do theater.

Sophia Loren

I wasn't even in a theater because I guess nobody believed in me, so I was in the hallway of a theater on a platform that they would move so the main stage show could go on at eight o'clock and I'd be gone.

John Leguizamo

Of course theater will always be associated intimately to literature, but the themes or whatever have to penetrate you by the senses. Theater is a sensuous experience, and that's its main difference from film or any other dramatic art.

Robert Lepage

I looked at theater, in the sense that theater is unmanipulated. If I want to pay more attention to one character on stage than another, I can. I think there's not enough theater in film and not enough film in theater, in a way.

Sam Levinson

I did as much theater as I could. I worked at a theme park and a Bible theater and a community theater.

Cailee Spaeny

I want the type of career where I can come back to theater. Theater is my home. Theater, to me, is like ballet for dancers. It's my foundation.

Condola Rashad

I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.

Harold Prince

To stay around any place you love, you have to have a job. In college at Georgetown in the fifties, I got my first theater job checking coats at the National, which was Washington's main theater.

John Guare

When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.

Julie Taymor

I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.