Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clinches his fist.
—Kenneth Tynan
Topics: Audiences
A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—Kenneth Tynan
Topics: Criticism
A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
—Kenneth Tynan
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.
—Kenneth Tynan
The greatest films are those which show how society shapes man. The greatest plays are those which show how man shapes society.
—Kenneth Tynan
No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
—Kenneth Tynan
Topics: Theater
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
—Kenneth Tynan
Topics: Criticism, Art, Artists, Arts
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