George C. Wolfe
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.Collection: Space
Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way.Collection: Failure
It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional.
I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku.
As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.
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.
I was raised to believe that other people's suffering was my responsibility.
The world doesn't see a lot of gray. The world sees black and white, and then it understands.
I like to knock down walls and allow others to enter.
AIDS is a shared truth - it's not selective in its wrath.
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.
Everybody wants to be remembered for the best of who they are.
Ultimately, theatre is about creating a sense of wonder, and I think wonder is achieved not by a kind of wide-eyed silliness but by being available to that which is most unknown, inside the material and inside yourself.
I could program a 'fabulous, I love it' kind of hit season right now. I'm more interested in breaking boundaries, telling a story, defying a truth that has been accepted.
I personally am a very big fan of 'Romeo + Juliet.' It had a visceral power to it that I thought was just exhilarating. It was a very arresting and very disturbing and deeply compelling version of the play.
Anytime you create art, you create a mess. I mean, 'Hamlet' is a mess!
I'm more attracted to art that smashes than I am attracted to art that sits on a shelf and is beautiful.
When I was little, I remember rehearsing starving so that when I got to New York I would know how to do it.
In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.
I pride myself on being available to as many people's stories as I possibly can.
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.
The Public Theater requires one to be very public, and writing requires one to be very private.
There is a strange kind of parental pride when 'Topdog' ends up on Broadway, or 'Elaine Stritch.'
To want to come to New York, you have to have a sense of wonder about the world and a foolish sense of worth about yourself. And I, too, had both of those things.
If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room.
Our lives are connected in ways we can't imagine. They're connected even before we know they're connected.
Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole.
When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.
When I was on dialysis, I willed myself to do 'On the Town.' It accesses my most childlike, joyful love of theater.
When 'Jelly's' went out on tour, no one really wanted it. It was undersold. And I knew if I gave 'Noise' to someone else, they would sell it as 'Stomp' with little dancing black boys.
Producing has empowered me as an artist in a specific way. It's forced a certain kind of maturity.
Commercial theater, in its agenda to appeal to everybody, is often at the expense of the unique vision of the artist.
Racists are deficient as human beings.
There's no place more theatrical than history.
The only rule of a musical is that it must maintain its buoyancy.
A lot of directors tend to manipulate actors' vulnerability to get what they want, and that can work.
I'm interested in exploring how an individual maintains a sense of power in a world that tends to make individuals feel powerless.
Generally, the realm in which black playwrights have been allowed to achieve success has been social realism or musicals.
I've always tried to do shows in a filmic way. I like it when forms smack up against each other.
In the early '90s or so, I drove my father to Providence, Ky., his hometown, and he was pointing out, 'That's where the doctor's office was,' and 'That's where we bought ice cream.' And he was pointing to empty lots. When you lose communities, what do you have? We often survive by remembering the stories.
It may take a while, but I think 'On the Town' has the potential for us to break down the boundaries between the traditional theatergoer who may have fond memories of the musical and those with a 'Broadway-is-not-for-me' agenda.
When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important.
I think we all have a primal desire to know as much as we can to find out about where we come from.
Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war.
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.
I feel like I've been very blessed in the sense that I've had the veracity of spirit to not be stopped and, at the same time, the protective energy and the generosity of those who have come before me, who saw something inside of me and, therefore, invited me into rooms that I would not have been inside of otherwise.
I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived.
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.
The rules I sort of live by for my theater career, which I hope to live for my film career, is that if there's something that intrigues me or fascinates me, or I don't know how to do it, then I should do it.
I'm perpetually interested by living in places as an artist confronting challenges I've never confronted before and approaching them with as much craft and humanity as I can.