Quotations: Volume 12

Here are some of the educational, inspirational, and humorous quotations from my classes this week:


"I never really get resistance to 'find yourselves lying down.' Like, 'I will NOT!'" - Voice Professor

Voice Professor: These never don't hurt. It's just to varying degrees.
Two-Shots-Up: These never don't hurt?
The Pro: And she's our speech teacher.
Voice Professor: But I'm not your grammar teacher. I did say 'don-t', didn't I?

"Don't punch your larynx. You might be doing it for the right reasons, but it's never a good thing to do." - Voice Professor

"My president is black!" - Thrill, in an etude

"The character doesn't know stuff about themselves. And when they learn, they will change." - Acting Professor

Analysis Professor: Men of Tortuga is a political thriller.
(D-Train laughs)
Analysis Professor: What?
D-Train: I just think that's funny... A political thriller.
Analysis Professor: Did you drink your lunch again?

"Morals be damned; the poor can't afford them." - Analysis Professor, on Heartbreak House

"Lunch breaks don't count as breaks. They're too short. I need my lunch break to be about a week and a half." - Big Show

Acting Professor: [Thrill] looks thoughtful today.
Thrill: I been thinking a lot, man.
Acting Professor: Really?
Thrill: Yeah. About acting and stuff.
Acting Professor: Thoughtful about acting?
Thrill: I know, man. Next thing you know, I'm-a start readin' or somethin'.

"He himself was not at all a handsome person." - Acting Professor, on Michael Chekov

"The nature of theatre is to share with the audience, not to hide from the audience." - Acting Professor

"How many of us have had a beautiful moment while practicing at home alone? Without an audience, is that acting? Let's face it; it's different. That scene was between you and God." - Acting Professor

"This is one need that really matters; why do I need to be an actor? If you can answer that, then everything else will fall into place." - Acting Professor

"Knowing the answer to this question and feeling the answer are two different things." - Acting Professor, on "Why do I need to be an actor?"

"Have you experienced this with professors who really know their subjects? They talk about Napoleonic war, and you think, 'Wow! Were you there?'" - Acting Professor

"Don't analyze; synthesize." - Acting Professor, on our observation projects

"Your job is not to succeed; your job is to fail and learn from it." - Acting Professor

"You need to let it grow inside you until it is ready. But instead of waiting the full nine months, sometimes people try to push it out after three. Neh-eh. It won't be pretty." - Acting Professor, on developing a character

"Talk to it. Check in with it. Do your sonogram. Whatever." - Acting Professor, on developing a character

Killer: I feel like my brain's being bruised.
Voice Professor: Too dramatic.

"My doctor said, 'Those are your ovaries,' and I said, 'Damn it! I thought it was my psoas!" - Voice Professor

Voice Professor: You can't feel the ovaries from the outside on most women, but I'm very slender in that area.
The Pro: That's like my gay nightmare!

"I have to touch them. They're my balls." - Voice Professor

Voice Professor: [Movement Professor] was my teacher.
All-The-Way: So you know.

"Alright. Any questions to the happy couple?" - Acting Professor, after All-The-Way and Big Show had an etude end in a couple's squabble

"I had an actor once who every time you asked him to repeat a scene would say, 'Okay, at the risk of tampering with perfection.'" - Acting Professor

(After D-Train and Killer did an etude)
Acting Professor: What is your relationship?
D-Train: I think he was gonna rub my feet. Also, I think he usually brings me wine.

"The jester always hates the king." - Acting Professor

"Are you telling me you thought that was a reference to marijuana? [D-Train], you are so f***ing young." - Analysis Professor, after D-Train mentioned he thought it was funny that the line "Put that in your pipe and smoke it" was in the play Anna Christie (written in 1930)

"Sailors... find a new girl in every port... Just a thought." - Wifey, in a discussion on Anna Christie

D-Train: Fallacious?
Big Show: Fallacious as in fallacy.
Wifey: Not as in fellatio.
D-Train: No, no, I know.

"Pull apart your threads of subjectivity. Don't just say, 'I can't read The Glass Menagerie because I hate my mother.'" - Analysis Professor

"You have all begun to learn something great; to enjoy your failures as well as your successes." - Movement Professor

"Also with this tremor comes the dreaded 'falling-off-my-body shirt'." - Voice Professor

"Let me tell you, when I'm driving, I have no trouble processing anger." - Voice Professor, on how she got herself past the anger she felt in the Bow tremor position

"It just made sense to me, from, you know, the acting ether." - O.D.

"Freedom is freedom, baby!" - Acting Professor