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THEATRE QUOTESQUOTATIONS, APHORISM, PHRASES ABOUT THEATREWorld Theatre Day Message - 27 March 2016 "Do we need theatre? That is the question thousands of professionals disappointed in theatre and millions of people who are tired of it are asking themselves. What do we need it for? In those years when the scene is so insignificant in comparison with the city squares and state lands, where the authentic tragedies of real life are being played. What is it to us? Gold-plated galleries and balconies in the theatre halls, velvet armchairs, dirty stage wings, well-polished actors' voices, - or vice versa, something that might look apparently different: black boxes, stained with mud and blood, with a bunch of rabid naked bodies inside. What is it able to tell us? Everything! Theatre can tell us everything. How the gods dwell in heaven, and how prisoners languish in forgotten caves underground, and how passion can elevate us, and how love can ruin, and how no-one needs a good person in this world, and how deception reigns, and how people live in apartments, while children wither in refugee camps, and how they all have to return back to the desert, and how day after day we are forced to part with our beloveds, - theatre can tell everything. The theatre has always been and it will remain forever. And now, in those last fifty or seventy years, it is particularly necessary. Because if you take a look at all the public arts, you can immediately see that only theatre is giving us - a word from mouth to mouth, a glance from eye to eye, a gesture from hand to hand, and from body to body. It does not need any intermediary to work among human beings - it constitutes the most transparent side of light, it does not belong to either south, or north, or east, or west - oh no, it is the essence of light itself, shining from all four corners of the world, immediately recognizable by any person, whether hostile or friendly towards it. And we need theatre that always remains different, we need theatre of many different kinds. Still, I think that among all possible forms and shapes of theatre its archaic forms will now prove to be mostly in demand. Theatre of ritual forms should not be artificially opposed to that of “civilized” nations. Secular culture is now being more and more emasculated, socalled "cultural information" gradually replaces and pushes out simple entities, as well as our hope of eventually meeting them one day. But I can see it clearly now: theatre is opening its doors widely. Free admission for all and everybody. To hell with gadgets and computers - just go to the theatre, occupy whole rows in the stalls and in the galleries, listen to the word and look at living images! - it is theatre in front of you, do not neglect it and do not miss a chance to participate in it - perhaps the most precious chance we share in our vain and hurried lives. We need every kind of theatre. There is only one theatre which is surely not needed by anyone - I mean a theatre of political games, a theatre of a political "mousetraps", a theatre of politicians, a futile theatre of politics. What we certainly do not need is a theatre of daily terror - whether individual or collective, what we do not need is the theatre of corpses and blood on the streets and squares, in the capitals or in the provinces, a phony theatre of clashes between religions or ethnic groups..." - Anatoli Vassiliev "Wherever there is human society, the irrepressible Spirit of Performance manifests. Under trees in tiny villages, and on high tech stages in global metropolis; in school halls and in fields and in temples; in slums, in urban plazas, community centres and inner-city basements, people are drawn together to commune in the ephemeral theatrical worlds that we create to express our human complexity, our diversity, our vulnerability, in living flesh, and breath, and voice. We gather to weep and to remember; to laugh and to contemplate; to learn and to affirm and to imagine. To wonder at technical dexterity, and to incarnate gods. To catch our collective breath at our capacity for beauty and compassion and monstrosity. We come to be energized, and to be empowered. To celebrate the wealth of our various cultures, and to dissolve the boundaries that divide us. Wherever there is human society, the irrepressible Spirit of Performance manifests. Born of community, it wears the masks and the costumes of our varied traditions. It harnesses our languages and rhythms and gestures, and clears a space in our midst. And we, the artists that work with this ancient spirit, feel compelled to channel it through our hearts, our ideas and our bodies to reveal our realities in all their mundanity and glittering mystery. But, in this era in which so many millions are struggling to survive, are suffering under oppressive regimes and predatory capitalism, are fleeing conflict and hardship; in which our privacy is invaded by secret services and our words are censored by intrusive governments; in which forests are being annihilated, species exterminated, and oceans poisoned: what do we feel compelled to reveal? In this world of unequal power, in which various hegemonic orders try to convince us that one nation, one race, one gender, one sexual preference, one religion, one ideology, one cultural framework is superior to all others, is it really defensible to insist that the arts should be unshackled from social agendas? Are we, the artists of arenas and stages, conforming to the sanitized demands of the market, or seizing the power that we have: to clear a space in the hearts and minds of society, to gather people around us, to inspire, enchant and inform, and to create a world of hope and open-hearted collaboration? " - Brett Bailey "A long time ago, Power resolved the intolerance against Commedia dell’Arte actors by chasing them out of the country. Today, actors and theatre companies have difficulties finding public stages, theatres and spectators, all because of the crisis. Rulers are, therefore, no longer concerned with problems of control over those who express themselves with irony and sarcasm, since there is no place for actors, nor is there a public to address. On the contrary, during the Renaissance, in Italy those in power had to make a significant effort in order to hold the Commedianti at bay, since these enjoyed a large audience. It is known that the great exodus of Commedia dell’Arte players happened in the century of the counter Reformation, which decreed the dismantling of all theatre spaces, especially in Rome, where they were accused of offending the holy city. In 1697, Pope Innocent XII, under the pressure of insistent requests from the more conservative side of the bourgeoisie and of the major exponents of the clergy, ordered the demolition of Tordinona Theatre which, according to the moralists, had staged the greatest number of obscene displays. At the time of the counter-Reformation, cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was active in the North of Italy, had committed himself to the redemption of the “children of Milan”, establishing a clear distinction between art, as the highest form of spiritual education, and theatre, the manifestation of profanity and of vanity. In a letter addressed to his collaborators, which I quote off the cuff, he expresses himself more or less as follows: “Concerned with eradicating the evil weed, we have done our utmost to burn texts containing infamous speeches, to eradicate them from the memory of men, and at the same time to prosecute also those who divulged such texts in print. Evidently, however, while we were asleep, the devil labored with renewed cunning. How far more penetrating to the soul is what the eyes can see, than what can be read off such books! How far more devastating to the minds of adolescents and young girls is the spoken word and the appropriate gesture, than a dead word printed in books. It is therefore urgent to rid our cities of theatre makers, as we do with unwanted souls”. Thus the only solution to the crisis lies in the hope that a great expulsion is organized against us and especially against young people who wish to learn the art of theatre: a new diaspora of Commedianti, of theatre makers, who would, from such an imposition, doubtlessly draw unimaginable benefits for the sake of a new representation" - Dario Fo "Never lose yourself on the stage. Always act in your own person, as an artist. The moment you lose yourself on the stage marks the departure from truly living your part and the beginning of exaggerated false acting. Therefore, no matter how much you act, how many parts you take, you should never allow yourself any exception to the rule of using your own feelings. To break that rule is the equivalent of killing the person you are portraying, because you deprive him of a palpitating, living, human soul, which is the real source of life for a part" - Constantin Stanislavski "To act is to give. You give gifts to your audience. You expose your vulnerability and share yourself, warts and all. You are giving love" - Ginger Friedman "You have already been a few years in a theatre, or you have been born of theatrical parents; or you have been a painter for a while but have felt the longing towards movement; or you have been a manufacturer. Perhaps you quarreled with your parents when you were eighteen, because you wished to go on the stage, and they would not let you. They perhaps asked why you wanted to go on the stage, and you could give no reasonable answer because you wanted to do that which no reasonable answer could explain; in other words, you wanted to fly. And had you said to your parents, "I want to fly", I think that you would have probably got further than had you alarmed them with the terrible words, "I want to go on the stage" - Edward Gordon Craig "There are rules in writing for the theatre,” he says. “You have to be aware of physical distance, what people will understand in the first row and in the back row. You have to understand that people will only hear it once – unlike a poem, where you can go back and reread something you don’t understand. You have to be aware of acoustics, how much more important that is in the theatre than it is in film. And theatre is linear, things happen one thing after the other. You can bend these things, but there’s no way of avoiding them." - Marius von Mayenburg "Life beats down and crushes our souls and theatre reminds us that we have one. At least the type of theatre that I'm interested in; that is, theatre that moves an audience. You have the opportunity to literally impact the lives of people if they work on material that has integrity. But today, most actors simply want to be famous. Well, being an actor was never supposed to be about fame and money. Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition" - Sanford Meisner "The actor creates with his own flesh and blood all those things which all the arts try in some way to describe" - Lee Strasberg "The truth of ourselves is the root of our acting" - Sanford Meisner "Theatre makes what isn't there, be there and what doesn't exist, exist" - Mike Alfred "Every day should be considered a World Theatre Day, because throughout the last 20 centuries, the flame of theatre has always burned steadily in some corner of the world. The theatre has always been under threat of extinction, especially with the rise of the cinema, television and now digital media. Technology invaded the stage and annihilated the human dimension and an attempt was made to create a plastic theatre, a sort of painting in movement that replaced the spoken word. Plays were staged without dialogue, without lights or without actors, using only dummies and dolls showcased by multiple lighting effects. Technology tried to turn the theatre into a firework display or a fairground sideshow. Now we are witnessing the return of actors before audiences. Today, we are seeing the return of words to the stage. The theatre has renounced mass communication and recognized its inherent limits ; two beings facing each other, communicating feelings, emotions, dreams and hopes. Scenic art is relinquishing story-telling in favor of discussing ideas. The theatre moves, illuminates, disquiets, disturbs, lifts the spirit, reveals, provokes and violates conventions. It is a conversation shared with society. Theatre is the first art to confront emptiness, shadows and silence to make words, movement, lights and life surge forth. Theatre is a living creature that destroys itself as it is created, but always arises from the ashes. It is a magic communication in which all people give and receive something that transforms them. The theatre reflects humankind’s existential anguish and unravels the human condition. It is not its creators who speak through the theatre, but rather the society of the epoch. The theatre has visible enemies, the lack of artistic education in childhood that hinders discovering and enjoying it; the poverty that is invading the world, keeping audiences away, and the indifference and neglect of governments that should be promoting it. Gods and men used to speak to one another on the stage, but now men speak to other men. Therefore, the theatre must be grander and better than life itself. Theatre is an act of faith in the value of a wise word in an insane world. It is a demonstration of faith in human beings who are responsible for their destiny. We have to experience the theatre in order to understand what is happening to us, to transmit the pain and suffering that is all around us, but also to glimpse a ray of hope in the chaos and nightmare of our daily lives. Long live the officiating participants in the rite of theatre! Long live the theatre!" - Victor Hugo Rascón Banda "One must ask oneself what is indispensable to theatre. Let's see. Can the theatre exist without costumes and sets? Yes, it can. Can it exist without music to accompany the plot? Yes. Can it exist without lighting effects? Of course. And without a text? Yes; the history of the theatre confirms this. In the evolution of the theatrical art the text was one of the last elements to be added. If we place some people on a stage with a scenario they themselves have put together and let them improvise their parts as in the Commedia dell'Arte, the performance will be equally good even if the words are not articulated but simply muttered. But can the theatre exist without actors? I know of no example of this. One could mention the puppet-show. Even here, however, an actor is to be found behind the scenes, although of another kind. Can the theatre exist without an audience? At least one spectator is needed to make it a performance. So we are left with the actor and the spectator. We can thus define the theatre as "what take place between spectator and actor". All the other things a supplementary - perhaps necessary, but nevertheless supplementary. It is no mere coincidence that our own theatre laboratory developed from a theatre rich in resources - in which the plastic arts, lighting and music, were constantly exploited - into the ascetic theatre we have become in recent years: an ascetic theatre in which the actors and audience are all that is left. All other visual elements - e. g. plastic, etc. - are constructed by means of the actor's body, the acoustic and musical effects by his voice. This does not mean that we look down upon literature, but that we do not find in it the creative part of the theatre, even though great literary works can, no doubt, have a stimulating effect on this genesis. Since our theatre consists only of actors and audience, we make special demands on both parties. Even though we cannot educate the audience - not systematically, at least - we can educate the actor." - Jerzy Grotowski "To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real." - Marina Abramovic
"In 1959, when I had the honor and pleasure of being invited by the International Theatre Institute to take part in its Congress in Helsinki, I spoke about the New Theatre, which is now no longer new and which at that time was known as the Avant-garde Theatre. I concluded my message by saying: the avant-garde is freedom. This definition, or proclamation, was regarded by most of the representatives of both eastern and western countries as being subversive and dangerous. Since then, a great deal has changed. In those days, men of the theatre still restricted themselves either to bourgeois realism or to a more or less socialist realism and were afraid of imagination. Realism of one kind or another still prevails in drawing-room theatre and in the ideological theatre but all the new and interesting developments during the past fifteen years or more have transcended various forms of realism and constraint. Many of us have condemned realism for the simple reason that reality is not realistic and because realism is just one school, style and convention among others and has become academic and is therefore dead. We have also condemned the ideological theatre because the ideological theatre is itself a constraint, a prison, and the prisoner of ideas, doctrines and assumptions towards which the playwright is not allowed to adopt a critical attitude. |
"There are a number of hypotheses on the origins of theatre but the one I find the most thought-provoking takes the form of a fable: one night, at the dawn of time, a group of men were gathered together in a quarry to warm themselves around a fire and tell stories. All of a sudden, one of them had the idea to stand up and use his shadow to illustrate his tale. Using the light from the flames he made characters appear, larger than life, on the walls of the quarry. Amazed, the others recognized in turn the strong and the weak, the oppressor and the oppressed, the god and the mortal. Nowadays, the light of projectors has replaced the original bonfire, and stage machinery, the walls of the quarry. And with all due deference to certain purists, this fable reminds us that technology is at the very beginnings of theatre and that it should not be perceived as a threat but as a uniting element. The survival of the art of theatre depends on its capacity to reinvent itself by embracing new tools and new languages. For how could the theatre continue to bear witness to the great issues of its epoch and promote understanding between peoples without having, itself, a spirit of openness? How could it pride itself on offering solutions to the problems of intolerance, exclusion and racism if, in its own practice, it resisted any fusion and integration? In order to represent the world in all its complexity, the artist must bring forth new forms and ideas, and trust in the intelligence of the spectator, who is capable of distinguishing the silhouette of humanity within this perpetual play of light and shadow. It is true that by playing too much with fire, we take a risk, but we also take a chance: we might get burned, but we might also amaze and enlighten." - Robert Lepage