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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" 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 I hadn't told stories, I would've been a historian. "

" 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. "

" Musicals spring forth from minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodramas; it was all these things combined to create the form. "

" A musical is what happens when text collides with motion collides with song collides with spectacle. And spectacle can be the human heart; it doesn't necessarily have to be a helicopter crashing. "

" I absolutely love working on musicals, but anytime I finish a project, I want to move on to something completely different. "

" When I was on dialysis, I willed myself to do 'On the Town.' It accesses my most childlike, joyful love of theater. "

" My first play, 'The Colored Museum,' was done in '86 at the Public Theater. "

" 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. "

" I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku. "

" I'm the most democratic fascist you'll ever meet. I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision. "

" One of the things I learned very early on was that if you cast the show correctly, and if you've created the right energy in the room, the solution is also in the room. The solution doesn't necessarily come from someone, but if everybody is working in a very steadfast and rigorous way, then everything you're looking for is in the room. "

" I've always tried to do shows in a filmic way. I like it when forms smack up against each other. "

" 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. "

" I'm more attracted to art that smashes than I am attracted to art that sits on a shelf and is beautiful. "

George C. Wolfe

Than

" When I was little, I remember rehearsing starving so that when I got to New York I would know how to do it. "

" A lot of directors tend to manipulate actors' vulnerability to get what they want, and that can work. "

" 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

" Theater should address the stories of its communities, or I don't know why it's here. "

" Certain things come to me; I just become intrigued by them and want to live inside them. "

" Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon. "

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

Memories

Down

" A music serves truth up to you in a really interesting way that allows you to luxuriate in its beauty and, at the same time, to hopefully see yourself in its fragility. "

" The hardest thing about a musical is making sure everybody is working on the same damn show. That is the monster. "

" The Public Theater requires one to be very public, and writing requires one to be very private. "