Tynan on Theatre

Tynan - He's so bloody good there is no point in doing anything but letting him speak for himself. A few select quotes from Tynan on Theatre.


'It seemed to me unfair that an art so potent should also be so transient.'

On the Theatre Critics Job...

'Writing letters to posterity.'

'His traffic is with those who may want to know a few decades hence, exactly what it was like to be in a theatre on a particular night. His job is to record a unique experience as it impinged on his mind and sensability, and the whole machinary of bias and prefrence contained therein.'

Quote from George Jean Nathan

'There is no such thing as an impersonal critic because there is no such thing as an impersonal person.'

'I admire actors but I worship theatre. Serving the end I must occasionally injure the means.'

On Theatre...

'I became aware that art, ethics, politics and economics are inseperable from one another; I realized that the theatre was a branch of sociology as well as a means of self expression.'

'No theatre could sanely flourish unless there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.'

'A Statue is a man in clay or marble: a play is a human situation projected in theatrical terms.'

'What we have to decided is whether we want our theatre to batten on the lipstick of life or the blood of it.'

'The play that distracts is extolled at the expense of the play that focuses.'