A Quote by Bertolt Brecht

Don't expect the theatre to satisfy the habits of its audience, but to change them. — © Bertolt Brecht
Don't expect the theatre to satisfy the habits of its audience, but to change them.
I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.
I expect that my readers have been to Europe, I expect them to have some feeling for a foreign language, I expect them to have read books - there are a lot of people like that! That's my audience.
In the theatre the audience wants to be surprised - but by things that they expect.
In the theatre the audience want to be surprised - but by things that they expect.
The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.
I think a lot of audience members don't realize the part that they play in live theatre. The audience actually has a mood. Sometimes they're tired and bored, and we have to wake them up and engage them.
If you expect the best, you will be the best. Learn to use one of the most powerful laws in this world; change your mental habits to belief instead of disbelief. Learn to expect, not to doubt. In so doing, you bring everything into the realm of possibility.
I play for the audience's pleasure. What I expect from them is not important; it's what they expect from me.
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
I don't work for the commercial success of the film. I work to satisfy my producers who give me the money. I work to satisfy the director who has written a script for me. Of course, I have to satisfy the actor in me, but I want to satisfy them first.
The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience's eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker I know is speaking clearly to the audience 'right now.'
Theatre is very much concerned with the society, with the social situation... A theatre piece of itself, demands a confrontation with the audience. It demands that you connect with people; it demands a collective and social effort with the company and later with the audience.
Old habits eat good intentions for lunch. Change your habits so you can change your outcomes.
Once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.
As far as I'm concerned, an audience is an audience. Whether it's an audience in Hull or the National Theatre, that's who you play to. It's not money - it's good to get some, but that's not why I do it. You do it because you have to, to tell a story.
To be honest, I am not theatre-trained and though I am confident in my skill set, to do theatre requires a better-tuned set of muscles and I sometimes defer to actors who are better trained. But at the times I do want a shot, I'll go for it, especially if the piece speaks to me and the opportunity comes up. The immediate response from a theatre audience is so thrilling, affirming, and soul-feeding; to know how you've affected an audience at curtain can be ego-blowing, both good and bad.
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