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

George C. Wolfe

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" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

" At the end of the day, 'Shuffle Along' is about people coming together and making something extraordinary - and history not necessarily being kind to them. It's about the love of necessarily being kind to them. It's about the love of doing, regardless of the consequences. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

" You adjust what you do depending on the actor. You evolve a vocabulary and a way of language and talking with each actor. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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

" 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

" I like to knock down walls and allow others to enter. "

George C. Wolfe

" To me, 'Show Boat' was the first American musical, the first to have the real texture of this country. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" Every single wave, when I was overwhelmed and poor and struggling in New York, there were these extraordinary people in New York who said, 'Come this way.' "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

" Anytime you create art, you create a mess. I mean, 'Hamlet' is a mess! "

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

" The only rule of a musical is that it must maintain its buoyancy. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

" One thing I tend to do is ask actors tons and tons of questions to try to get at what they're thinking but also to expose to them whatever box they've placed their characters in - to blow up that box so the journey can begin. "

George C. Wolfe

" Commercial theater, in its agenda to appeal to everybody, is often at the expense of the unique vision of the artist. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" The black experience, which has nothing to do with my play 'Angels in America,' allowed me to understand the Mormon character. He was the character that couldn't come out to his mother. It allowed me to understand emotional and closeted behavior, because you're so acutely aware of how you're perceived. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

" I love Kabuki, Noh theater and bunraku. "

George C. Wolfe

" If you love theatre, do theatre wherever you can, because theatre is theatre, and you can experience it anywhere. "

George C. Wolfe

" There's no place more theatrical than history. "

George C. Wolfe

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

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. "

George C. Wolfe