"Acting is the craft of living fully and truthfully under imaginary circumstances."
What other practitioners have discovered about the craft:
"In 'real life' the mother begging for her child's life, the criminal begging for a pardon, the atoning lover pleading for one last chance -- these people give no attention whatever to their own state, and all attention to the state of that person from whom they require their object. This outward-directedness brings the actor in 'real life' to a state of magnificent responsiveness and makes his/her progress thrilling to watch. On the stage, similarly, it is the progress of the outward-directed Actor, who behaves with no regards to his/her personal state, but with all regard for the responses of his antagonists, which thrills the viewers." - David Mamet
"There can be no acting or doing of any kind till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible." - Thomas Carlyle
"The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre is a spiritual and social X-ray of its time. The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation." - Stella Adler
"Acting doesn't have anything to do with listening to the words. We never really listen, in general conversation, to what the other person is saying. We listen to what they mean. And what they mean is often quite apart from the words. When you see a scene between two actors that goes really well you can be sure they're not listening to each other -- they're feeling what the other person is trying to get at. Know what I mean?" - Jack Lemmon
"Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your reflexes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear, the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy." - Clive Swift
"When student-actors see people and the way they behave when together, see the color of the sky, hear the sounds in the air, feel the ground beneath them and the wind on their faces, they get a wider view of their personal world and development in the theater is quickened. The world provides the material for the theater and artistic growth develops hand-in-hand with one's recognition of it and one's self within it." - Viola Spolin
"More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic." - Uta Hagen
"We talk and act a bit differently in bed than at work, or at a bar, or at a cocktail party, or at a PTA meeting. The idea of 'just being yourself' is a total abstraction, for we are many selves and we wear many masks." - Robert Cohen
"An actor must make his needs (goals, wants, objectives) so strong that he is willing to interfere with the other actor in order to get what he needs. Interfering means getting in their way so that what you want is stronger than what they want." - Michael Shurtleff
"In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit." - Stella Adler
