Quotations: Volume 36

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

(Disclaimer: quotations are often taken out of context and may not accurately reflect the way they were originally intended)


"I have excellent peripheral vision. I trained with [Movement Professor]."
- Voice Professor

"Let's look at punctuation. Does everyone know what a comma is?"
- Voice Professor

"(quoting her handout)Exclamation Point: A mark of punctuation used to indicate excitement or emotion.' I took that straight from 'Conjunction Junction'. I didn't know how else to say it."
- Voice Professor

"Angela's saying just because you go off your diet doesn't mean you pig out all the rest of the day."
- Voice Professor, after I had tried to avoid the use of un-iambic meter in a line that had started with a trochee

"What's a Montague?"
- Iceman, making a joke after Voice Professor asked if there were any words we should look up in the Juliet monologue we're working on

"Ballet is a woman."
- Movement Professor

"If I screw up, just follow [All-The-Way]."
- Movement Professor

"I can't say this when the boys are here, but through ballet you can have the experience of rapture."
- Movement Professor

"Angela looks like a Muppet."
- Acting Professoressa, when Angela came to class wearing purple and black striped tights under her dress

(during rehearsal for The Greeks)
Acting Professoressa: [Thrill], you're swaying back and forth like a palm tree in a hurricane.
Thrill: Yeah, I got caught in an air conditioning draft there.

"This is work that you should begin the minute you wake up in the morning."
- Acting Professoressa

"Get connected before you enter. You've got to be in the zone."
- Acting Professoressa, on not just jumping in and out of character

(three unfamiliar men walked into the theatre while we were on break from Greeks rehearsal)
Iceman: (to the men) Hello, fellas!
(the men smile)
Angela: (whispers to Iceman)Who are they?
(the men leave)
Iceman: They're my new friends, that's all.

"Now listen, there were a surprising number of good things that happened today."
- Acting Professoressa, after Tuesday's run of The Greeks

(after Acting Professoressa had told D-Train that she wanted to work with him more on some Orestes stuff, and asked if he could meet on his lunch hour the following day)
D-Train: I don't know that we need to work it, or if I just need to answer some questions for myself and just let it grow in my stomach.
Acting Professoressa: If it's growin' in your stomach, I don't want to have anything to do with it.

"Could you please do that linking-ly? I just made up a word."
- Acting Professoressa

"Don't bounce Clytemnestra's head, is the note."
- Acting Professoressa, to Big Show after Wifey mentioned that she's getting abused while being a corpse

"They'd be like, 'Oh, somebody's rhyming. I guess it's my entrance.'"
- Voice Professoressa, on how rhyming couplets are often at the ends of speeches in Shakespeare plays because they were used as cues to off-stage actors who didn't have the whole script

"I don't care where you are. You could be on f***ing Coney Island, just come in on cue."
- Acting Professoressa

"Spit, don't dribble."
- Acting Professoressa, to O.D. regarding an action of his character of Peleus in Andromache

(to Killer about why, as a soldier, he shouldn't push Menelaus out of his way even though he's angry)
"It's about status. You know, I wouldn't go up and push [Artistic Director] out of the way. I might push Angela out of the way. (sees that Angela looks confused as to why she's being pushed) I'm only kidding. (beat) It's a status thing."
- Acting Professoressa

"Remember, characters in classical plays think fast."
- Acting Professoressa

(After both Stage Manager and D-Train had trouble tearing gaff tape, and decided to just make the pieces longer)
D-Train: Guess I just have to be smarter than the tape.
Head of Program: Now there's a chore for ya.
D-Train: An impossibility, really.

(to Angela, regarding the line "Now, what's your saint of a mother's address down there? I want to send her a fruitcake.")
"It has to be harder. B****ier. 'I wanna send the b**** a f***in' fruitcake.'"
- Head of Program

(to Angela, regarding the line "Now, what's your saint of a mother's address down there? I want to send her a fruitcake.")
"That's just what you do in times of tragedy. You send fruitcake. Everyone loves fruitcake."
- Head of Program

(the day after Voice Professor attended a rehearsal of The Greeks, she gave us feedback)
Voice Professor: You know, the work was very interesting. I was very interesting in the storytelling.
D-Train: Really?
Voice Professor: I know. I was surprised, too!

"[O.D.] fell into a trap yesterday that is worth mentioning because everyone can fall into it at some point. I call it being seduced by your own voice. 'I love my voice. I love hearing my voice. I lover hearing my voice on the stage.' Don't let that happen. Don't be one of those actors."
- Voice Professor

"It's like this...(uses hand motion to demonstrate voice concept) If my hand can do it, then my voice can do it, right? That's my motto."
- Voice Professor

(to Wifey, regarding use of a prop
"F*** the scarf. It got in the way of the cue. (beat) (aside to Angela) Never took a note like that before, 'f*** the scarf.'"
- Acting Professoressa

"Why are you looking on the bright side of this, [All-The-Way]?"
- 1st-year LB, after a conversation where All-The-Way and D-Train tried to convince 1st-Year LB that it was actually a positive thing that his paper on The Wild Duck is due much earlier than ours was last year and told him to "look on the bright side"

"This is actually a really good time to be boring. You've gotta be boring sometimes. I just wish you wouldn't do it in front of me. And now you're never allowed to be boring again."
- Head of Program, after a boring run of the first act of The Mystery Plays


(in Voice class before The Greeks, Voice Professor decided to dedicate the class time to a luxurious, thorough vocal warm-up.)
"Destructure. (looks at clock and sees that we have tons of time in class, and no other task to get to, and then laughs) Forty minutes to destructure."
- Voice Professor

"Angela, you are a great actress."
- Acting Professoressa

"[Iceman], you need to move it along as The Caretaker. That was a five-act opera. A good one, but a five-act opera."
- Head of Program

(referring to Iceman as The Caretaker)
Head of Program: You were stopping at every clause.
Voice Professor: At every comma.
Head of Program: Even more than every comma. Every clause. It's like they used to say about trains in the thirties, when they made all the stops: 'This train stops at every tree!'
D-Train: Were you alive in the thirties?

"You have to make a lot of deposits into the pause bank before you can make a withdrawl. And right now most of us are overdrawn with our pauses."
- Head of Program

(after D-Train was asked to put on kneepads while we were running a section where he trips and falls)
D-Train: These are going to make me crazy all day.
Head of Program: Well, it'll be a short trip.