A Quote by Stella Adler

The play is not in the words, it’s in you! — © Stella Adler
The play is not in the words, it’s in you!
I try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can't put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn't be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words.
Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.
Probably the art, in that a lot of the people who I want to collaborate with can do something that I can't do. Like with New Bums and Donovan Quinn, he is seriously one of the greatest songwriters in terms of words that is alive right now. So I really wanted to play with him to experience that, to play music with these really great words.
a really good play is ambiguous - which is exactly why it endures. Every succeeding generation develops theories about it. The play's words provide very little clue. On the contrary, words are notoriously imprecise and open to every kind of interpretation, so you must search.
I like to play with words and the sounds of words - that's extremely important to me.
Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.
I shouldn't have acted. I didn't exhibit any ability. I was one of the kids in the school play who was just mouthing words, and they weren't the actual words of the song. I was pretty lame!
'Words, Words, Words' was very much its title. It's just words, words, words and trying to show that I can pack as much material into an hour as I possibly could word count-wise.
What I'm really involved in when I'm writing is something that no one ever mentions when they see any play. Writing is like trying to make gunpowder out of chemicals. You have these words and sentences and the strange meanings and associations that are attached to the words and sentences, and you're somehow cooking these things all up so that they suddenly explode and have a powerful effect. That's what absorbs me from day to day in writing a play.
The words 'alone,' 'lonely,' and 'loneliness' are three of the most powerful words in the English language. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.
Especially with the live, just the way I curve words, it's about expression. It's so emotive, to be able to release these words into a mike. It really emphasizes this insane tingle down my spine whenever I play.
If you're doing a classic play, where if you do a Chekhov, you do the words as written. You can't do that with a novel; you have to do your version of the words as written.
'Lip Lock' is a play on words. It sounds flirty and fun. Also, my lips are one of my favorite features. Also, it's like, literally locking the game down with my words because I'm a lyricist.
I don't like losing the words, as you have to, when I'm asked to turn a play into a movie. It's not a matter of ego . . . I'm just better able to create the character for an audience through words rather than through actions.
When you can type a few words into a search engine and land on your topic - or when you can scan a Shakespeare play for specific words or symbols - what opportunities might you miss to expand your thinking in unexpected ways?
Words, words, words, a million million words circle in my head like hawks, waiting to dive onto the page to rend and tear the only two words I want to write. Why me?
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