George C. Wolfe Quotes
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I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku.
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Musicals spring forth from minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodramas; it was all these things combined to create the form.
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You've got to make the rehearsal room very safe. You can't bully people, because if you bully people, they're going to freeze and lock up.
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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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I think I am the first person of color to direct a major white play on Broadway. In 1993? That's astounding to me. And horrifying to me.
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Theater should address the stories of its communities, or I don't know why it's here.
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Each actor, every single time you work with an actor, you have to come up with the language that's going to serve them. And that's what allows them to give the performance that you want to nurture inside of them and what you think they're capable of giving.
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There's no place more theatrical than history.
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I came to New York to write and direct, and when I got here, a lot of my rage came out.
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It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional.
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A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence.
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My first play, 'The Colored Museum,' was done in '86 at the Public Theater.
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Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon.
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'You Gotta Have Heart' is one of the most ridiculously perfect, amazing musical comedy songs ever.
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There is a strange kind of parental pride when 'Topdog' ends up on Broadway, or 'Elaine Stritch.'
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Certain things come to me; I just become intrigued by them and want to live inside them.
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The Public Theater requires one to be very public, and writing requires one to be very private.
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I think we all have a primal desire to know as much as we can to find out about where we come from.
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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 want to create a theater that looks, feels, and smells like America.
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When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important.
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If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room.
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You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving.
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The world doesn't see a lot of gray. The world sees black and white, and then it understands.