Playwriting Quotes

“When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say."

"Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise."

"What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?"

"You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another."

In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids

“How many plays have been written in France?' Candide asked the abbe.

'Five or six thousand.'

'That's a lot,' said Candide. 'How many of them are good?'

'Fifteen or sixteen,' replied the abbe.

'That's a lot,' said Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“If you want to change something by Tuesday, theater is no good. Journalism is what does that.

But, if you want to just alter the chemistry of the moral matrix, then theater has a longer half-life.”
― Tom Stoppard

“Actors are all about entrances, but writers are all about exits.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“Everything influences playwrights. A playwright who isn't influenced is never of any use.”
― Arthur Miller

“Making Life means making trouble”
― George Bernard Shaw

“YOU HAVE TO ASK HARD QUESTIONS.”
― Tony Kushner

“Don't make a wall of glass between your play and the people watching. Don't forget they were once children, who enjoyed being read to, or sung to sleep.”
― Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater

“Your boss takes a dim view of SEX?”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, Death Troupe

“There are three primal urges in human beings: food, sex, and rewriting some else's play.”
― Romulus Linney, Six Plays

“As a youth I enjoyed — indeed, like most of my contemporaries, revered — the agitprop plays of Brecht, and his indictments of Capitalism. It later occurred to me that his plays were copyrighted, and that he, like I, was living through the operations of that same free market. His protestations were not borne out by his actions, neither could they be. Why, then, did he profess Communism? Because it sold. The public’s endorsement of his plays kept him alive; as Marx was kept alive by the fortune Engels’s family had made selling furniture; as universities, established and funded by the Free Enterprise system — which is to say by the accrual of wealth — house, support, and coddle generations of the young in their dissertations on the evils of America.”
― David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

“How do we as artists question our sins in front of a greater audience? How do we as Jews show ourselves as flawed and complex human beings?”
― Paula Vogel, Indecent

“My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now. I didn't recognize the poetry in everyday language of black America. I thought I had to change it to create art.”
― August Wilson

“In truth, there was no systematic policy except that which engaged the various personalities that grew around the original nucleus assembled by George Devine and Tony Richardson. Most of these were, in the mild climate of the time, left of centre, though they would now be regarded as soft-meringue-liberals by the drowsy commissars who have long since taken over.”
― John Osborne, Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise

“Men jeg drister mig, uden Vanitet, at sige, at vore Nordiske Tilskuere, helst af Middelstand, ere langt beqvem-mere Dommere herudi, end de Parisiske: Thi hvis de første ikke have saa fiin Smag som de sidste, saa have de den dog ikke saa selsom og fordærved.”
― Ludvig Holberg, Epistler

“Ingen kand dømme om et Skuespill, uden den der haver udstuderet et Theatrum, og af Erfarenhed mærket, hvad Virkning en Comoedie giør paa Skue-Pladsen: Og, naar saa er, kand man ikke meget reflectere paa deres Domme, der sidde hiemme og criticere udi deres Skriver-Stuer, uden at have seet et Skuespills Forestilning; thi de samme kand ikke dømme uden om Stilen, om Moralske Sententzer, og et Stykkes Regularitet, da Erfarenhed lærer, at en Comoedie, som efter alle Academiske Regler er indretted, dog ingen Comoedie er. Thi mangt et Skuespill, som ved Læsning synes at være af ingen Betydelse, haver den fortreffeligste Virkning paa Skue-Pladsen. Et Skuespils Vægt og Gyldighed grunder sig derfor ikke paa lærde Journalisters Critiqver, men paa Tilskuernes Applausu: naar jeg siger Tilskuerne, meener jeg alleene saadanne, som have en naturlig og ufordærved Smag.”
― Ludvig Holberg

“He put a fresh sheet in and, after spending a few moments wishing he were doing something quite different, typed:

Gregory: But this is really qutie farcical.

Like all the other lines of dialogue he had so far evolved, it struck him as not only in need of instant replacement, but as requiring a longish paragraph of negative stage direction in the faint hope of getting it said ordinarily, and not ordinarily in inverted commas, either. Experimentally, he typed:

(Say this without raising your chin or opening your eyes wide or tilting your face or putting on that look of vague affront you use when you think you are "underlining the emergence of a new balance of forces in the scheme of the action" like the producer told you or letting your mind focus more than you can help on sentences like "Mr. Recktham managed to breathe some life into the wooden and conventional part of Gregory" or putting any more expression into it than as if you were reading aloud something you thought was pretty boring (and not as if you were doing an imitation of someone on a stage reading aloud something he thought was pretty boring, either) or hesitating before or after "quite" or saying "fusskle" instead of "farcical".)

Breathing heavily, Bowen now x-ed out his original line of dialogue and typed:

Gregory: You're just pulling my leg.”
― Kingsley Amis, I Like It Here

“Find Your Art Family. That means that there is space for everyone's art in this big beautiful world, you just need to find members of your Art Family - artists and art lovers who are interested in work that resonates with your own and who will support what you need for your individual process. These folks might be found in large cities, or down small country lanes. They might be produced in Los Angeles, California or Austin, Texas or Omaha, Nebraska. Once you find a creative home with them, then you will be able to do your best work because you will be valued and you will lift each other up. As Paula Vogel says, Circles Rise Together. Once you find the right family circle for you, you will do your best work.”
― Jacqueline Goldfinger