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

George C. Wolfe

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" Generally, the realm in which black playwrights have been allowed to achieve success has been social realism or musicals. "

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

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

George C. Wolfe

" Always, when I do a play, there's got to be an equation of risks and potential failure. When you're working on a new play, it's like, 'How the hell do I do this, and do we have the time?' All of these huge questions engage, hopefully, the smartest part of me. And then when you're doing a revival, I went, 'Well, somebody's already solved it.' "

George C. Wolfe

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Confidence comes in going on personal journeys in a public arena and feeling as though you have a right to do that. You have to give yourself permission to discover what you need to discover and not worry about how pretty the journey is. If you're aware of the pretty, you're not going to dig into the mess. "

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

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

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

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

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

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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

" 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

" 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

" Most musicals are informed by very rigid archetypes. If you get a very sophisticated mind writing them, you sense something else, but it's a folk-art form, really, at its best. At different times, I've tried to push against it as much as I possibly could, but ultimately, it is a folk-art form. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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

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

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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

" When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important. "

George C. Wolfe

" Our lives are connected in ways we can't imagine. They're connected even before we know they're connected. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe