Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
-- Anthony's Law of Force

"Where's my stick? I need to beat an actor!"
-- muttered by student stage manager Charles Gornik when an actor missed an entrance

Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results.
(Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations)

Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
(Fudd's First Law)

Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star act. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs.

-- Lollapalooza Alumni Henry Rollins

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. -- Walter Elias Disney

A Stagehand and a Lighting Designer stood under the same falling truss, and both were killed. They arrived heaven together (all techies go to heaven...), and at the doorstep, St.Peter shaked their hands and asked for their last wishes. The LD was the quickest of the two, and said: " In all my life, I've always dreamt of the complete darkness. Could you please turn off all the lights for just one second?" St.Peter said that it might be difficult, but he turned on his headset and asked God if he could take down the grandmaster for a second. Fortunately, God was in the mood that day, due to enough coffee at the light-console, so he tapped the BO key. It went far beyond dark for a second, but when the light turned back on, heaven was gone as the stagehand had changed the scenery...

If All the World's a stage, and all the people merely players... ...Who the ##^@(%^ has my script?

1) Your are never ahead of schedule until you are done early.
2) The sooner you get behind, the longer you have to catch up.
3) I feel a whole lot more like I do now than I did before.

-- O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an incurable optimist.
-- The Unspeakable Law: As soon as you mention something... if it's good, it goes away; if it's bad, it happens.
-- The First Law of Theatre: Everything will take longer than it really should.
-- The Second Law of Theatre: If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
-- The Third Law of Theatre: Glory may be fleeting but obscurity lasts forever.
-- Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
-- The Golden Rule: Whosoever has the gold makes the rules.
-- The Law of Learning: Experience is something you don?t get until after you needed it.
-- There is no job so simple that it can't be done wrong.
-- Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
-- There is no limit to how bad things can get.
-- A crisis develops when you can no longer say, "Let's forget the whole thing."
-- He who pays the piper calls the tune.
-- 1: "What happened?"
2: "Things went from bad to worse"
1: "Then what?"
2: "History repeated itself"

"Actors are props with dialogue"
"Beat to fit, paint to match"
"If force doesn't work, you're not using enough"
"An actor without techies is a naked person standing in the dark trying to emote; A techie without actors is a person with marketable skills."
"Umm, 'scuze me, your techies are showing..."
"If we could read minds, we wouldn't need headsets."

"We are here to offer Creative Solutions to Difficult Problems", which for you new guys its a fancy way to say we are going lie cheat and steal to get this lead ballon of the gound.

"Do what the director tells you to do, than do it the right way"

"If all the world's a stage...I want better lighting!"

"Oh yea right, like nothing will go wrong (note the sarcasism), whats the number for security again? oh, there is none? uhm ok...so, wanna take on a new role?"

Our Motto: Actors are stupid.

Another one we liked to use was a line borrowed from, The Right Stuff:
Dear Lord. Plese doen't let me f**k up.

If it's lose, an actor will trip over it, if you say not to touch it, they'll touch it, actors are like kids growing up, no real regards for the rules and just want to do their own thing.
"Who, wha, what, hit who with what chicken"

"Be kind to your techies, or they will turn out the lights and go home!"

"O Lord, it's hard to be humble, when you are perfect in every way"

Lord grant me the Serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to hide the bodies of those actors I had to kill because they pissed me off.

Directors aren't very direct are they?

"I'm NEVER going to direct another play with actors in it."

One of the best retorts I've heard for those occasions when artistic endeavor collides with economic reality:
"That's why they call it Show Biz and not Show Artz."

"What would a smart guy do?"
---What every techie needs to ask himself 79 times a day.
"This food is for the tech crew."

-- All the world's a stage -- and I'm the stage manager.
-- If all the worlds a stage - when is curtain call?
-- Determining the sexual preference of dead playwrights, while politically incorrect and academically irrelevant, is big fun. -- The Reduced Shakespeare Co.
-- I don't do Mondays.
-- Those who would alter reality must first escape it.
-- And on the first day the lord said... ...Lx1, Go! and there was light!
-- Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...
-- I need some duck tape. My duck has a quack in it...
-- In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice this is just not true.
-- Living in Hollywood is like living in a bowl of granola. What ain't fruits and nuts is flakes.
-- One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.
-- PPPPPP = proper planning prevents piss poor productions
-- PPPPPPP = Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance! (USMC ver.)
-- Seen on lapel pins worn by the light crew at a now­defunct theatre: "F**k with me and you dance in the dark."
-- Show me a script that calls for no actors, dancers, musicians or artists; and, I will show you a techie's DREAM!
-- The classic struggle in Theatre: "The Show must go on" ­vs­ "This is stupid, I'm going home."
-- The more of a reason you have, the more important it is to beat something senseless with your crescent. (directors included)
-- We are agreed that your ideas are crazy. What we have yet to determine is whether your ideas are crazy enough to be true.
-- Where would God have been without techs?
-- Lesson 1 in theatre: NEVER ASSUME. "Assumtion is the mother of all f**kups"