Thinking Through Theatre Quotes

“Stanley presents himself as the enemy of illusion, but his allegiance to facts is selective and strategic.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“We feel because something has happened.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Performance becomes one of the ways truth enters the room.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“If leaving Don Pedro is easy, then the courage to do so is easy too.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Sorrow gains force as daily business continues beside it.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The more polished a performance looks, the less real it feels, and that’s when the audience and the scene partner lose interest.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The truth, in these plays, does not arrive. It presses.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“We do theatre to know we’re not alone. We write to know we’re not alone.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Fear signals the presence of danger. Grief testifies to the worth of what was lost.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“When every pause arrives dressed for a funeral, Masha has little reason to wear black.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Stella does not establish which account is true; she establishes which account her life can accommodate.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Absurdism asked how we live when the world gives us no answer; Meta-Absurdism asks how we live when the world gives us too many.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The learning, if it is genuine, will continue long after the audience has gone home.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Socratic dialogue insists that truth is not a prize handed down but a path walked together.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“To be asked a serious question is to be taken seriously.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The silence gathers weight because someone is thinking faster than language can keep pace.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“To listen fully on stage is to relinquish a degree of control.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The search for truth requires intellectual rigor and intellectual humility in equal measure.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“A vacation becomes content while it is still being lived.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The actor does not play a man who is sad, but a man trying to appear happy.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“To imagine well is to love well.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Chekhov understood how much a person can confess while trying to keep a room comfortable.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The audience hears the larger feeling because the character has chosen a sentence small enough to survive the room.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“What makes Ibsen endure is his ability to show human beings recognizing the structures that shaped them while they are still living inside them.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“An actor cannot play courage as a general quality because courage becomes visible only when something desirable lies on the other side of the choice.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Every actor knows the moment when a line changes in the speaking.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Acting trains us to observe how feelings arise, how impulses travel, how the body communicates meaning long before words appear.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“The actor who genuinely listens risks being changed by what occurs.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Because the actor is not pretending to feel, they are allowing themselves to feel.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention

“Some truths arrive only through stillness, and meaning often deepens through sustained practice rather than polished execution.”
― Jill Szoo Wilson, Thinking Through Theatre: Essays on Playwrights, Performance, and the Art of Paying Attention