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" If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room. "
George C. Wolfe
Commitment
Passion
Room
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" If you love theatre, do theatre wherever you can, because theatre is theatre, and you can experience it anywhere. "
George C. Wolfe
Theatre
Love
Experience
" Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war. "
George C. Wolfe
You
Kind
Culture
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Early
Father
You
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Community
Feel
Myself
" I want to create a theater that looks, feels, and smells like America. "
George C. Wolfe
Like
Create
America
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Problems
Hard Work
Fly
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Past
People
Me
" I was obsessed with New York early on. I was watching sitcoms that were set in or around New York, like 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I was always very fascinated with the people who were on 'What's My Line?' and I always had an incredible obsession with the city. "
George C. Wolfe
Always
City
New York
" I pride myself on being available to as many people's stories as I possibly can. "
George C. Wolfe
People
Being
Stories
" It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional. "
George C. Wolfe
Tough
Edgy
Emotional
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Play
Thought
Just
" I'm the most democratic fascist you'll ever meet. I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision. "
George C. Wolfe
You
Listen
Then
" Generally, the realm in which black playwrights have been allowed to achieve success has been social realism or musicals. "
George C. Wolfe
Social
Black
Achieve
" When I was little, I remember rehearsing starving so that when I got to New York I would know how to do it. "
George C. Wolfe
Remember
Got
How
" There is a strange kind of parental pride when 'Topdog' ends up on Broadway, or 'Elaine Stritch.' "
George C. Wolfe
Pride
Broadway
Ends
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Go
American
You
" I was raised to believe that other people's suffering was my responsibility. "
George C. Wolfe
Responsibility
Suffering
Other
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Journey
You
Back
" 1985 - That was my time in New York, and I have such poetic, fond memories. "
George C. Wolfe
Time
Memories
My Time
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Time
Language
Performance
" I like to knock down walls and allow others to enter. "
George C. Wolfe
Down
Like
Others
" Musicals spring forth from minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodramas; it was all these things combined to create the form. "
George C. Wolfe
Spring
Things
Create
" There's no place more theatrical than history. "
George C. Wolfe
Than
Theatrical
History
" Certain things come to me; I just become intrigued by them and want to live inside them. "
George C. Wolfe
Inside
Become
Live
" Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience. "
George C. Wolfe
America
Journey
End
" 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. "
George C. Wolfe
Artist
Always
Happen
" Growing up in the South, I was raised to be a Negro boy. I was acutely aware how other people perceived me, and that informed my behavior. That worked for a period of time, but it could also be suffocating. "
George C. Wolfe
Time
People
Me
" 'Jelly,' more than any black musical before it, celebrated the majesty, the purity, the joy of so many artists who are unable to fully embody these same qualities in their own lives. "
George C. Wolfe
Own
Same
Black
" The Public Theater requires one to be very public, and writing requires one to be very private. "
George C. Wolfe
Private
Theater
Very
" There is a real affection for these human beings on these stage that O'Neill really had. Out of that affection comes a lot of humor, which is unexpected when you think of 'The Iceman Cometh.' "
George C. Wolfe
Unexpected
Affection
Humor