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

George C. Wolfe

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" My absolutely favorite time of working on a project is the time I spend not knowing what it is. Because the longer you live inside that period, the likelier you are to discover something new. "

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 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. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

George C. Wolfe

" 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. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way. "

George C. Wolfe

" A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence. "

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 best of any artist is in their art. "

George C. Wolfe

" I came to New York to write and direct, and when I got here, a lot of my rage came out. "

George C. Wolfe

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

George C. Wolfe

" The rules I sort of live by for my theater career, which I hope to live for my film career, is that if there's something that intrigues me or fascinates me, or I don't know how to do it, then I should do it. "

George C. Wolfe

" '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. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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! "

George C. Wolfe

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

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

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

George C. Wolfe

" Racists are deficient as human beings. "

George C. Wolfe

" 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.' "

George C. Wolfe

" I feel like I'm edgy and I'm funny and I got this bite, this outrageousness. "

George C. Wolfe