George C. Wolfe Quotes
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The only rule of a musical is that it must maintain its buoyancy.
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I really don't find revivals very interesting because I like new work a lot. I feel like if you're going to pay me, then let me do what I do and let me try to solve some problems. Let me try to make something fly. Why would I do something that everybody has already done the hard work on? But that's me. Tons of people do revivals really well.
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I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.
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On different projects, different pieces of you will show up. Sometimes it's surprising which piece shows up.
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Generally, the realm in which black playwrights have been allowed to achieve success has been social realism or musicals.
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One thing I tend to do is ask actors tons and tons of questions to try to get at what they're thinking but also to expose to them whatever box they've placed their characters in - to blow up that box so the journey can begin.
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I've always tried to do shows in a filmic way. I like it when forms smack up against each other.
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I feel like I'm edgy and I'm funny and I got this bite, this outrageousness.
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Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole.
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All the things that can happen to an artist regardless of how prepared they are and how smart they are and hard-working they are and attractive - doesn't matter. There's always somebody cuter. There just is.
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Every play is rhythmic control. If you want an audience to go on a journey, it's rhythmic control. You're crafting when they lean in, when they push back, when they breathe, when they surrender.
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I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.'
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At the end of the day, 'Shuffle Along' is about people coming together and making something extraordinary - and history not necessarily being kind to them. It's about the love of necessarily being kind to them. It's about the love of doing, regardless of the consequences.
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The wonderful thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. The worst thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. That dynamic is thrilling and challenging every time you make a show.
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You adjust what you do depending on the actor. You evolve a vocabulary and a way of language and talking with each actor.
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Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war.
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I love working with a set designer because, in many respects, you meet the set designer before you meet the actors. So it's a chance for me as a director to figure out what I'm thinking and to explore how the space is going to actually be activated.
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Always, when I do a play, there's got to be an equation of risks and potential failure. When you're working on a new play, it's like, 'How the hell do I do this, and do we have the time?' All of these huge questions engage, hopefully, the smartest part of me. And then when you're doing a revival, I went, 'Well, somebody's already solved it.'
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Broadway was very vital back in the '20s. There were probably close to hundreds of productions that opened up through the course of the year and through the course of a Broadway season.
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A lot of directors tend to manipulate actors' vulnerability to get what they want, and that can work.
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In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.
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Our lives are connected in ways we can't imagine. They're connected even before we know they're connected.
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If you love theatre, do theatre wherever you can, because theatre is theatre, and you can experience it anywhere.
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My absolutely favorite time of working on a project is the time I spend not knowing what it is. Because the longer you live inside that period, the likelier you are to discover something new.