Top 1200 Broadway Theatre Quotes & Sayings

Surely no other American institution is so bound around and tightened up by rules, strictures, adages, and superstitions as the Broadway theatre.

Before I worked on film, I studied the theatre, and I expected that I would spend my whole career in theatre. Gradually, I started writing for the cinema. However, I feel grateful towards the theatre. I love working with spectators, and I love this experience with the theatre, and I like theatre culture.

The commercial theatre may still be considered one of New York's primary tourist attractions, but . . . there is no longer an audience for serious Broadway plays. . . . Perhaps we should acknowledge that, having lost its traditional audience, Broadway can never again be a home for new plays.

It's very hard to just break into movies. I always felt like it would be giving up a theatre career to go and try and be in movies. So, I thought I'd exhaust the theatre thing, go as far as I can, and originate roles, be on Broadway, maybe win some Tony Awards, and then hopefully some door would open. Luckily, it did.

'Grease' was my Broadway debut. That was eye-opening. At the same time, it was very familiar. It was a Broadway show, but it's kind of the same as doing a show in Minnesota. It's the same type of rehearsal process. You are doing 8 shows a week, but I worked at a theatre in Minnesota that did 11 shows a week.

I wanted to be a therapist if the acting didn't work. I also did a lot waitressing and odd jobs. I'd audition but couldn't get hired to save my life. I'd do Off-Broadway theatre and that was great and I was excited and thrilled, feeling like, 'Well, it's Off-Broadway, but there's still the Broadway in there.'

And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and off-off Broadway as far as I'm concerned is in New York the pride of New York theater.

I do not like the Broadway theatre because it does not know how to say hello. The tone of voice is false, the mannerisms are false, the sex is false, ideal, the Hollywood world of perfection, the clean image, the well pressed clothes, the well scrubbed anus, odorless, inhuman, of the Hollywood actor, the Broadway star. And the terrible false dirt of Broadway, the lower depths in which the dirt is imitated, inaccurate.

Everything I did growing up was with that as the real goal - doing Broadway; doing theatre. That was always the big thrill for me.

My first big show in Denver was 'Ruthless! The Musical.' I played Tina Denmark at the Theatre on Broadway. It was my big break!

We have a desperate need for producers in the [commercial Broadway] theatre, and it is very hard for them to get money and find investors for new plays.

I have seen Hollywood artistes like Al Pacino, Tom Cruise and Tim Burton doing theatre and Broadway shows. Cinema actors tend to go back to theatre because it gives them an opportunity to reinvent themselves.

I began modeling in N.Y. and doing commercials. That led to regional theatre and then Broadway and then movies.

I received the most fantastic welcome to the Broadway Theatre community. I walked on stage to tremendous applause and a long standing ovation, wondering when I was ever going to be able to say my first line!

There are two kinds of theatre, good and bad. Much as I should like to see theatre in America, I would rather have no theatre than bad theatre. What we must strive for is perfection and come as close to it as is humanly possible.

I love going to see the theatre whether it's a Broadway play or a Russian ballet company.

I didn't go to university. I studied theatre in high school and worked with Canberra Youth Theatre and The Street Theatre and other theatre organisations in Canberra, and that's how I got my training.

I pretty much got into theatre to do community theatre and things, but then I went to Williamstown and found an agent. I then went to New York and did a lot of theatre there, so I started doing only theatre.

I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress.

I want people to be obsessed with Broadway and theatre as much as I am.

I have very important phone messages that will be playing Broadway. An evening of my tweets I think is going to be booked into the Golden Theatre.

Some of my best friends have written Broadway shows. Allee Willis and Brenda Russell wrote The Color Purple which has been recently revived on Broadway. That to me is such a different hat that you have to wear, but music is music. A Broadway show is something I would love to have the opportunity to do.

No, I've never moved on with a play. I did the original 'Closer' in London but didn't transfer to the West End or Broadway with it. The same is true of 'Iceman': I didn't go to the Old Vic or Broadway with that. I don't know; I feel an allegiance often to the play where you do it first, in the theatre that it's in; you do it for that space.

If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot.

I don't see a future for Broadway-style theatre in India. We already have Hindi cinema, but small, intimate theatre will survive as long as people feel the need to talk to each other.

I started in theatre when I was 13 or 14 years old and did a lot of theatre until my early thirties. Off-Broadway stuff - off-off-off-off-Broadway stuff - and I do love it.

I am a Broadway theatre guy... so it was kind of my goal this year to come out to LA for pilot season and expand my horizons

When I look around at Broadway and the West End, theatre is becoming an exclusive club.

I coach young people. I have a group called BTP - Broadway Theatre Project.

'Blackbird' is the only one I've ever wanted to redo. It just haunted me, this play. There was a sense of unfinished business because at the time we did it at Manhattan Theatre Club, there was real momentum to move it to Broadway.

I love and respect theatre, so I am truly honored to have the opportunity to take my voice to the Broadway stage.

Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn't for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.

I've done a lot of costume drama and theatre - the National Theatre and In fact, most of my work at the theatre, at the National Theatre anyway, was period.

My introduction to acting was through theatre, so I actually saw a couple of Broadway shows that made me want to be an actor.

I tried theatre. I played Miss Hannigan for a short run of Annie at a regional theatre. That was fun. I enjoyed it! I enjoy theatre and have so much respect for theatre actors.

I'm not a person who believes that Broadway is the only place. I think there's lots of work that goes on outside of Broadway and outside of New York that's better than anything Broadway has ever seen. But, it's historically the place. It's one of the centers of the universe, in many ways.

A young Brit girl with no theatre experience decided to take on an iconic American role on Broadway. Maybe I should have thought that through?

If you love theatre, do theatre wherever you can, because theatre is theatre, and you can experience it anywhere.

The Broadway run of 'Memphis' has been like going to the moon. It was so great to actually open at the Shubert Theatre and then amazing to be nominated for eight Tonys and attend all the luncheons and events.

It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.

The stuff that is done on Broadway is hardly theatre. It is part magic show, part rock concert, and part conjuring things.

Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.

My aim is to bridge Broadway and the R&B world; and to bring all my Broadway experience to the R&B world; and one day, when I go back to Broadway, to bring some R&B to that.

I have theatre-training, I love doing theatre, I've done Broadway.

Christopher Walken was probably the most experienced dancing partner I've had in movies, because he has the same background as I do. He's from theatre, Broadway and off-Broadway, and we both shared that.

I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway.

I have ambitions to do a Broadway record one of these days and get in the studio with like, a real orchestra. I'm a big musical theatre geek.

Broadway is not about surprises. It's about rewarding the putrid, formulaic crap that makes Broadway Broadway.

I was on Broadway for three years with Spiderman and that amount of time spent on a show - it's a grind being on Broadway. The people that do that are probably the hardest working people. I shouldn't say that, because there's a lot of hard work that goes on in film and television, as well. That consistency of the grind of eight shows a week - I feel ready to go back to it now after having a bit of a break. I like to have the chance to jump between different art forms, whether it be theatre, film, TV, music. It's really wonderful to have opportunities in different arenas.

I played Tina Denmark in Ruthless the Musical when I was 9 at the Theatre on Broadway in Denver.

I take great pride in recalling that I could open in a play on Broadway or in London's West End and fill a theatre on the strength of my name - Steed's name.

Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.

And I don't consider Broadway the acropolis of theatrical art. I mean Broadway is commercial - that's what it is. It's expensive seats and a lot of them that have to be filled every night. Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway, as far as I'm concerned, is in New York the pride of New York theater.

I always admired Hugh Jackman as an actor in movies but also in theatre because I'm a big fan of Broadway musicals.

It took me a while to figure it out, but to have a real hit on Broadway, you have to get the respected Broadway people to like it. But then the production also has to appeal to the most middle-class people who know nothing about Broadway and who come to see it later.

I'm definitely nervous and excited. I feel like I've been playing off-Broadway, not to say that Boston doesn't have a great theatre district or great theatre, but it's not going to Broadway; it's just a different city.

I miss Broadway! I'm still a theatre kid, don't worry!

It's interesting that the wondrous 'Hamilton,' which I could not be more ecstatic about, has taken a long time to perfect to bring it to Broadway. And it wouldn't have been possible if it was developed in the commercial theatre from the get-go.

I am essentially someone who comes from the theatre. I love the theatre. Unfortunately, theatre doesn't pay the bills. Only in theatre abroad, I get a wage.

My mother's side of the family was in the production side of theatre. My grandfather, Jose Vega, was a general manager for Neil Simon shows on Broadway.