To me, what is important in the theater is that we don’t want to make a conclusion. We don’t want to make a statement, don’t want to say what something is. We want to ask, ‘What is it?’
– Robert Wilson
If you really want to help the American theater, don’t be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.
– Tallulah Bankhead
“Excited tourists
stop and stare, awed by Times Square –
forget they have feet.”
Madeleine Begun Kane
“I am willing to give you a show,
But are these all the rôles that you know?”
The manager cried.
And the actor replied,
“Sirrah! No, sir; I know ‘Cyrano’!”
Carolyn Wells
Artist: James Stevenson
Credit: James Stevenson The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
Artist: Liam Francis Walsh
Credit: Liam Francis Walsh The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank
It opened on May 23, 1922, and ran for 2327 performances, closing over five years later. At the time, that was the longest run in Broadway history.
But not according to the critics.
[I was] on stage in “The Beard of Avon,” a farce. I was playing the role of the boy player, Geoffrey dunderbread. It was a short scene from a rehearsal of Titus. My mouth was shoved full of fruit roll ups, which was to be my tongue [soon to be cut out] (I wanted steak, but whatever).
I waited on stage, by myself, on my knees, mouth full of fruit roll ups, unable to talk, for approximately 4-6 minutes on opening night, due to [another] actor missing an entrance that started the scene.
Never have my ears been so hot.
It was January of 1962. The Broadway production of Subways are for Sleeping at the St. James Theatre was getting weak reviews. Ticket revenues were low, and in need of some magic.
Producer David Merrick had a trick up his sleeve that he had been saving for several years. He spent some time making some interesting arrangements, and then prepared the following advertisement for every major New York newspaper.
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― Al Pacino
Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
― Sanford Meisner
