Programme (theatre)

“ Of late it has seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned anything and they, of course, knew it all already.
For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists we announced prizes. ”

“ When all is said and done, this time difficulty caused by the greater vividness of stage presentation remains the chief obstacle in the way of the dramatist who would write of 11 a sequence of historical events or of evolution or devolution in character. Again we foresee probable differences in technique, this time caused by the theatre, the stage, and the intense vividness of the latter.
The novel is, so to speak, the work of an individual; a play is a cooperative effort—of author, actor, producer, and even audience. ”

“ A perfect theatrical performance must harmonise the work of many men. The dramatist, the actors main and minor, the stage-manager, the scene-painter, the costumer, the leader of the orchestra, must all contribute their separate talents to the production of a single work of art. ”

“ The rest of the evening's entertainment never took on any definite framework, altho the final item on the program was likely to be a piece of some length, often a burlesque of a serious drama then popular, and this little play "enlisted the whole strength of the company." Between the stately First Part and the more pretentious terminating sketch, the minstrels presented a variety of acts in which the several members exhibited their specialities. ”

“ In arranging a private theatrical, which is almost invariably an amateur venture, the first important thing to do is to find a play which is adapted to that talent which is available. It is wise to appoint a committee to read numerous plays and select for final consideration those that seem best fitted to the type of actors and actresses available. ”

“ For the stage is not merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. ”

“ each had depended after all on the set stage and the convention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food. ”

“ As in a theatre the eyes of men After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious; ”

“ The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage, ”

“ Every movement of the theatre, by a skilful poet, is communicated, as it were by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions, which actuate the several personages of the drama. ”

“ What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious, you know; ”

“ It was left by Aristoxenus, who with great ability and labour classified and arranged in it the different modes. In accordance with it, and by giving heed to these theories, one can easily bring a theatre to perfection, from the point of view of the nature of the voice, so as to give pleasure to the audience. ”

“ There are, of course, some things which, for utility's sake, must be made of the same size in a small theatre, and a large one: such as the steps, curved cross-aisles, their parapets, the passages, stair­ways, stages, tribunals, and any other things which occur that make it necessary to give up symmetry so as not to interfere with utility. ”

“ Is there anything more terrible than a “call”? It affords an occasion for the exchange of the most threadbare commonplaces. Calls and the theatre are the two great centres for the propagation of platitudes. ”

“ Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in. ”

“ I account this world a tedious theatre, For I do play a part in 't 'gainst my will. ”

“ It was only in the theatre that I lived. ”

“ J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal
Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore,
Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal
Une miraculeuse aurore;
J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal
Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze,
Terrasser rénorme Satan;
Mais mon cœur que jamais ne visite l'extase,
Est un théâtre où l'on attend
Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze. ”

“ "The theatre has often been at variance with the pulpit: they ought not, I think, to quarrel. How much is it to be wished, that in both the celebration of nature and of God were entrusted to none but men of noble minds! ”

“ In the whole course of our work at the theatre we have been I may say drenched with advice by friendly people who for years gave us the reasons why we did not succeed.... All their advice, or at least some of it, might have been good if we had wanted to make money, to make a common place of amusement. ”

“ On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting:
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day; ”

“ There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor. ”

“ let not censure term our fate our choice,
The stage but echoes back the publick voice;
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live. ”

“ The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting. ”

“ He seems, in manner and rank, above the class of young men who take that turn; but I remember hearing them say, that the little theatre at Fairport was to open with the performance of a young gentleman, being his first appearance on any stage.—If this should be thee, Lovel!—Lovel? yes, Lovel or Belville are just the names which youngsters are apt to assume on such occasions—on my life, I am sorry for the lad." ”

“ Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror. ”

“ For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality. ”

“ And concluding, which is clear, The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech, It also, peradventure, may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume; And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds. ”

“ It is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. ”

“ “At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes. And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means.” ”

“ A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. ”

“ In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it. ”

“ Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet. ”

“ They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they shew us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. The stage is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the world, with the dull part left out: and, indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all the rest. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. ”

“ The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling, to the prompter's bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that's anything but gay. ”

“ Few Germans, perhaps few men of any modern nation, have a proper sense of an æsthetic whole:—they praise and blame by passages; they are charmed by passages; and who has greater reason to rejoice at this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piece-work matter?" ”

“ At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their aunt—Aunt Wess'—were still waiting for the rest of the theatre-party to appear. ”

“ If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. ”

“ Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. ”

“ Indeed it is with some violence to the imagination that we conceive of an actor as belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage. ”

“ Usefulness! It is not a fascinating word, and the quality is not one of which the aspiring spirit can dream o' nights, yet on the stage it is the first thing to aim at. ”

“ The idea of bringing young people up to Literature is doubtless calculated to raise the eyebrows almost as much as the suggestion of bringing them up to the Stage. ”

“ Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. ”

“ You will hear more good things on the outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; ”

“ However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. ”