Harold Prince Quotes
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I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.
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The idea is to work and to experiment. Some things will be creatively successful, some things will succeed at the box office, and some things will only - which is the biggest only - teach you things that see the future. And they're probably as valuable as any of your successes.
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Collaboration is just, really, a group of people getting in a room with their eye on a very similar prize and wanting to come out with the same show. The director, ultimately, is the guy in front of whom the buck stops. So, he has to have the courage to prevail. But, he has got to have a huge amount of respect for his collaborators.
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You do a show to be a hit and hopefully run a couple of years.
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Lyrics can't do what they do - or should do - when you're creating a musical with rock lyrics. There's plenty of room for rock musicals, just not all rock musicals.
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I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.
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'Showboat' is the quintessential family show.
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I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present.
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Producing should be a creative responsibility.
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Throwing money at something doesn't really create - forgive me that onerous word - art.
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You can't just keep recycling revivals. And you can't keep betting on the efforts of guys like me who've been around. You have to take the next step and bet on the next generation.
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Artistic self-indulgence is the mark of an amateur. The temptation to make scenes, to appear late, to call in sick, not to meet deadlines, not to be organized, is at heart a sign of your own insecurity and at worst the sign of an amateur.
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The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.
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I didn't go into the theater to be a producer, I went into the theater to be a director.
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I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.
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I like to do everything you can possibly do before you go into rehearsal, because once we are in rehearsal or on the stage there will be a problem I didn't anticipate. It's really good to think we got it all nailed - of course you've never got it all nailed.
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One thing is certain: We can't go back. The musical will never be the same as it was.
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A star may guarantee business, but the tradeoff is a very short run.
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You could argue that 'Sweeney Todd' was romantic, if you looked closely at it, but it didn't impart that to its audiences. But it's large, and it's melodramatic, and it's a style I like to work in periodically.
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Nobody has yet proven that taking a chance and doing something unique that an audience isn't used to is a bad idea. What the theater lacks is that kind of courage.
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I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.
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I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.
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I wouldn't want to be just pigeonholed as an extravagant director.
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Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.