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" 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. "

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" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

Safe

Going

People

" 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

American

You

" 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. "

" I was raised to believe that other people's suffering was my responsibility. "

" 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. "

" On different projects, different pieces of you will show up. Sometimes it's surprising which piece shows up. "

" 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

" I pride myself on being available to as many people's stories as I possibly can. "

" The worst thing when you're working is to say, 'I have a question,' and the other person goes, 'No! This is what it is.' That kind of rigidity is very challenging because musicals are constantly mutating. "

" There is a strange kind of parental pride when 'Topdog' ends up on Broadway, or 'Elaine Stritch.' "

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

" Everybody wants to be remembered for the best of who they are. "

" I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived. "

" I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku. "

" I'm interested in exploring how an individual maintains a sense of power in a world that tends to make individuals feel powerless. "

" In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other. "

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

" I think there's an aspect of my soul, of my personality, that's very suited to directing. I like being in the room with actors; I love creating a safe space and a chaotic space for the discovery to take place. I love creating a sense of community. "

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

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

" 1985 - That was my time in New York, and I have such poetic, fond memories. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Producing has empowered me as an artist in a specific way. It's forced a certain kind of maturity. "

George C. Wolfe

Artist

Maturity

" With actors, I have very close, intense working relationships with actors in theater. "

" Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war. "

" 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. "

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

" Racists are deficient as human beings. "