Theatre has nothing to do with buildings or other physical constructions. Theatre — or theatricality — is the capacity, this human property which allows man to observe himself in action, in activity. The self-knowledge thus acquired allows him to be the subject (the one who observes) of another subject (the one who acts). It allows him to imagine variations of his action, to study alternatives. Man can see himself in the act of seeing, in the act of acting, in the act of feeling, the act of thinking. Feel himself feeling, think himself thinking.

The art of the theater is action. It is the study of commitment. The word is an act. To SAY the word in such a way as to make it heard and understood by all in the theater is a commitment — it is the highest art to see a human being out on a stage speaking to a thousand of his or her peers saying, 'These words which I am speaking are the TRUTH — they are not an approximation of any kind. They are the God's truth, and I support them with my life,' which is what the actor does on stage.

In its most archaic sense, theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings—and not by animals—to observe themselves in action. Humans are capable of seeing themselves in the act of seeing, of thinking their emotions, of being moved by their thoughts. They can see themselves here and imagine themselves there; they can see themselves today and imagine themselves tomorrow. This is why humans are able to identify (themselves and others) and not merely to recognise.

Everything is theater.

That’s the wonderful thing about the theater. Unlike in the movies where once a movie is finished and released you can’t change it, in the theater a show is a living thing. When you realize something is wrong you can actually fix it and mount a new production.

The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains. Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied. This is partly because the audience is also a court against which there is no appeal.

MENDEL: What shall we play?
BERISH: Can I choose?
MENDEL: Of course; it’s your theater.
MARIA: Long live theater...What’s theater?
BERISH: When you do something without doing it, when you say something without saying it, while thinking that you did say, and you did do something—anything—that’s theater.

To quote a Shakespearean cliché, repeated to death because it is so stubbornly true: “All the world’s a stage.” Work is theater. The place where life unfolds to our tragic or comic satisfaction.

The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything—gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness—rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre.

The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

All life is theatre," he said. "We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves...." He laughed gently. "Some players would say that is the best kind of theatre there can be.

Theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.

And who’s to say where life ceases and theater begins—

All of us are in some sort of theater that we create for ourselves.