George C. Wolfe Quotes
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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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In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.
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I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku.
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AIDS is a shared truth - it's not selective in its wrath.
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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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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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I don't go, like, 'Hmm, I'm now going to create something for the black community.' I just feel this compelling urge. I just feel myself drawn to stories that I feel have a potency and immediacy.
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Confidence comes in going on personal journeys in a public arena and feeling as though you have a right to do that. You have to give yourself permission to discover what you need to discover and not worry about how pretty the journey is. If you're aware of the pretty, you're not going to dig into the mess.
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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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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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'You Gotta Have Heart' is one of the most ridiculously perfect, amazing musical comedy songs ever.
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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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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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There's no place more theatrical than history.
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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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When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important.
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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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My first play, 'The Colored Museum,' was done in '86 at the Public Theater.
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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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If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room.
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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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I want to create a theater that looks, feels, and smells like America.