Top 1200 Theatre Directors Quotes & Sayings

I don't go to a lot of other directors' sets; directors don't come to mine. Directors are all very cordial with each other, but they're not necessarily friendly.

I trained in the theatre and I love the theatre. I get such a thrill seeing anything in the theatre.

I think theatre helped, only because it was acting experience. I got to work with a lot of directors.

I come from the theatre, my bones are in the theatre; it’s as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre

In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.

There are two types of directors: the directors who take and directors who give.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

I understand the formula that producers hire directors and directors are hired to direct and actors are hired to act. I don't have any conflict with any directors because I know they're the boss.

I went to theatre school for four years and just wanted to do theatre. I had no ambition to be on TV or to be on camera. I just wanted to go to New York or London and be on stage... I did a lot of theatre in Montreal, got involved in TV in Toronto and then moved to L.A. I hope that film and TV will take me back to theatre.

I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room.

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

Most theatre is still really bad. It has to appeal to people who do jobs and have lives. Theatre about theatre is the most awful, terminal nonsense.

I didn't particularly aim to be a Shakespeare actor, but I suppose I had a certain gift or it; I certainly got offered lots of it. I liked Complicite and Shared Experience and Kick Theatre, and all the small theatre companies that were getting going. I wanted to be like that, making original theatre.

I think you're peripatetic when you work in this industry. My husband and I are assuming the role of co-artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. But as long as the film industry will have me, I will have it.

I was one of the artistic directors of the Steppenwolf Theatre, which me and many dear buddies started all the way back in 1974, and I have a lot of that in my makeup.

I was crazy into performing when I was younger. I was obsessed with the craft of acting, and theatre, and stage. You know the term 'theatre geek?' I am the extreme theatre geek.

I started - well, in England it works a little bit differently. You have to do Fringe theatre, which is basically free theatre. You do it in pubs and small theaters and village halls across the country, and you work for a theatre company. You're part of a troupe.

There's a lot of great, talented, passionate musical theatre practitioners and directors here. But it's very hard to suddenly start building great musicals in a town like Sydney where there hasn't been any great musicals built.

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.

In Europe, it is not so unusual for directors to move between opera, theatre, and film, and I have at least three girlfriends I can think of who have directed in all three genres.

Most of the people dishing out judgment have no working experience of the theatre, have not written a professional play, a sketch, or even a joke; have never worked in a theatre, taken an acting class, or published any extended piece of work. They are creative virgins; everything they know about theatre is book-learned and second-hand.

My whole family is very artistic - my uncles are all actors and theatre directors.

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.

Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.

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.

I'm not being offered a constant stream of wonderful parts with wonderful directors that would keep me away from the theatre. When they turn up, I do them.

All drama teachers are very effusive, very emotionally open, very big, and gesticulate a lot, and are very physical. Those people don't work in banks and they don't work for pharmaceutical companies. They teach drama, or they may be theatre directors. That's why I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.

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 was a bit odd as a kid, because there were so little outlets for me. There was no theatre except for the odd community theatre and school shows. The only movie theatre was at the Canadian Forces Base nearby in Comox, so it either showed kiddie flicks for the families and restricted stuff for the men.

I'm not sure I approve of theatre as a university course. I think theatre's something you do. I mean, literature is a subject; theatre is practical.

In much postmodern theatre ... the line between theatre and non-theatre is deliberately erased.

I didn't grow up a theatre kid, going to theatre camps. I played sports, and that was my main direction. But luckily, I never had to choose between sports and theatre.

I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college.

As my passion is theatre when I do a film I'm taking time out from my theatre career. So, I'm desperate to get back into the theatre. So, I have to make sure that I put my foot down, especially with the agents and stuff, and say: "Hey no, I'm doing some theatre!" It is hard but it matters so much to me that it's just something that's going to be necessary and people will have to deal with it.

I never studied theatre; I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.

I don't think I have advice for female directors as opposed to male directors. I think all first-time directors should try and be as prepared as they possibly can, because it's hard!

Directors don't get to see other directors at work - they're the only one on the set. I've met directors who've asked me what another filmmaker is like. So, there's probably nobody better placed to make all the comparisons and to pick up stuff than an actor.

Asim has done English theatre with Naseeruddin Shah and his group, Hindi theatre with Makarand Deshpande, and Marathi theatre with me. He is a hardworking actor - I am not saying this just because he is my son but as an actor and spectator.

It's not that writing staffs don't change at all, but they don't change very much. Directors are freelancers. There are directors who do five or 10 episodes of a show every year for years, but most directors are freelance, they come and go.

The theatre training is second to none in Ireland and England. You meet people who haven't had theatre training - it is harder for people who worked in TV to go into theatre than the other way around.

I went to college and did theatre. After that, I spent about three years in Seattle doing French theater and community theater and sorting it all out. Then I applied to graduate school and got accepted, so I started pursuing my master's in theatre at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

I was into theatre in school and college with theatre personality Barry John, who has also trained Shah Rukh Khan. Then I joined the Elite modeling agency - they have different courses including grooming, modeling and theatre workshop. I was selected for modeling.

In the theatre in the U.K., women are at the very top of the tree as freelance directors.

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.

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 would do theatre till I die. Theatre keeps your honesty alive. You can't pollute yourself. You learn a lot, and you use theatre techniques in life.

All directors are control freaks and very obsessive. I get the feeling that directors as kids, they all have had a childhood with not too much contact with other kids. They constructed their own reality and they continue to do it. It's a funny breed, directors.

I don't have any problem working with first-time directors because all directors have to start somewhere and all great directors have had a first film. So, if you take the view that you don't want to work with a first-timer, you might miss out on a fantastic opportunity.

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.

When I started out, I was very vociferously against theatre or what I saw theatre as being, so I tried to make my plays the opposite of that - something a bit more cinematic. I'm a film kid, so I'll never have the same love of theatre as I do of movies. It's just the way I was brought up.

World Theatre Day is an important day for us, we get to applaud the efforts of renowned playwrights, actors, and directors who have put in toil and blood to create meaningful stories.

I come from the theatre; my bones are in the theatre. It's as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre.

I have a strong and strange character, and I've rarely met directors who knew what to do with this character. One of the few who did was my father, and in the theatre, Arthur Nauzyciel.

I am grateful to theatre for making me what I am today. But it's not like theatre is my first love. I am equally attached to cinema, which is, actually, a child of theatre, since it borrows heavily from it.

On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre.

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.

From musicals to plays, I was part of all things theatrical all through my school life in Chandigarh, and this helped me develop a strong love for theatre and acting. Even during college, I was active in the theatre scene and even founded two theatre groups.

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.

That really sets great directors apart from good directors: their ability to make you feel like you matter, even if your part is much smaller. That's one thing I found with most of the great directors I worked with: They all have that skill. Not everyone takes the time.