Richard Foreman famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense, and 'cathedral-like' structure of the highly educated and articulate personality--a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) there placement of complex inner density with a new kind of self--evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the 'instantly available.'
-- Richard Foreman

#Unique #Technology #Men
Understand--it ALWAYS makes sense. Sense can't be avoided. If it first seems to be non-sense, wait: roots will reveal themselves.
-- Richard Foreman

#Roots #Waiting #Firsts
I'm there to make a kind of theatrical music that is desperately missing in my life. And if other people don't like it, I'm very unhappy, but I can't do anything about that.
-- Richard Foreman

#People #Missing #Unhappy
I've been trying to figure out for at least the last 10 years how to force myself into something more risky.
-- Richard Foreman

#Years #Trying #Lasts
If I wasn't in the theater, I would be a hermit.
-- Richard Foreman

#Would Be #Hermits #Theater
I was enchanted by the escape into that meticulous world that seemed real yet not... well, it seemed not real, but very detailed and meticulous, bizarre.
-- Richard Foreman

#Real #World #Enchanted
You know, actually, I went to Yale because I wanted to stay out of the army.
-- Richard Foreman

#Army #Yale #Wanted
I realized that I had to be honest about where I was, where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do.
-- Richard Foreman

#Trying #Honest #Being Honest
Which implies that the real issue in art is the audience's response. Now I claim that when I make things, I don't care about the audience's response, I'm making them for myself. But I'm making them for myself as audience, because I want to wake myself up.
-- Richard Foreman

#Art #Real #Issues
One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.
-- Richard Foreman

#Art #Doe #Shock
It's true, I don't like the real world.
-- Richard Foreman

#Real #World #Real World
Now, when I started my theater, the modus operandi was having the actors stare right into the audience.
-- Richard Foreman

#Ukulele #Actors #Theater
I acted in junior high in the junior high school group, and then when I got into senior high I was, you know, the main actor of the senior high school.
-- Richard Foreman

#Senior #School #Aggravation
As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional.
-- Richard Foreman

#Emotional #Over You #Trying
What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.
-- Richard Foreman

#Writing #Play #New Day
Because even at the age of fifteen, I used to go see all the Broadway shows and feel that they were sentimental, that they were pandering to the audience and trying to manipulate the audience. I had no use for practically any of the shows that were hits.
-- Richard Foreman

#Age #Trying #Use
I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of selfâ€”evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the â€˜instantly availableâ€™.
-- Richard Foreman

#Technology #Self #Information
Everything Brecht wroteâ€”plays, dialogues, and poetryâ€”was his attempt to clarify the inner contradictions not only of the capitalism and fascism of his times, but also of the communism that was always disappointing his deepest hopes. In a book that makes Brechtâ€™s struggle to reveal these hidden contradictions its central theme, Glahn issues, by implication, a call to arms to todayâ€™s artistsâ€”who are faced with a world that seems to defy attempts to treat the global crisis with an art that is rarely more than notes on â€˜localâ€™ angst.
-- Richard Foreman

#Art #Struggle #Book
My play is the ultimate expression of my feeling of the twilight of Western civilization.
-- Richard Foreman

#Twilight #Civilization #Play
There is no work of art that has ever been made that is absolutely truthful about life.
-- Richard Foreman

#Art #Truthful #Made

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