Yes, the theatre is a supremely noble art, and you, dear actors, are artists above all else. From head to toe. Why else would you have risen to the painful, make-believe world of the boards? You are artists by occupation and preoccupation, and the word “Art” ought to be written in the auditorium and dressing rooms, before we have to write the word Business there instead, or some other word I dare not mention. And discipline, hierarchy, sacrifice, love.
I do not want to give any lesson; it is I who ought to be taking one. My words are dictated by enthusiasm and confidence. I am not a dreamer, I have thought hard and coldly about what I believe. Like a true Andalusian, I know the secret of coldness, for I have ancient blood. I know that truth is not with the man who eats his bread beside the fire and shouts “Today, today, today,” but with whoever serenely watches the first, distant light dawning on the field.
And I know that people in the right are not those who fasten their eyes on the little jaws of the ticket window and shout, “Now! Now!” but those who think of tomorrow and who sense that new life will soon be hovering over the world.
From Deep Songs and Other Prose, copyright © 1975 by the Estate of Federico Garcia Lorca. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
