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" 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

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

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

" I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.' "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

" There are a lot of people who will tell you I'm very ruthless. I'm very fierce. If I feel I'm right, if I feel I've been violated, then I am like a warrior from hell! "

" 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. "

" 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

Generosity

Time

" '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. "

" Racists are deficient as human beings. "

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

" Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole. "

" 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. "

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

" I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter. "

" 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. "

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

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

George C. Wolfe

Artist

Maturity

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

" 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

Chance

You

" 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 think we all have a primal desire to know as much as we can to find out about where we come from. "