Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
'Showboat' is the quintessential family show.
Producing should be a creative responsibility.
I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.
I wouldn't want to be just pigeonholed as an extravagant director.
Despite the successes, you remember the failures - rather lovingly.
A star may guarantee business, but the tradeoff is a very short run.
Criticism is valuable... and self-congratulatory experiences are not.
I don't think there's a defined contemporary American musical, do you?
I love big, bold, truthful theater - the tradition of Victorian theater.
We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.
I saw 'On The Town' about nine times. I discovered it. I loved it. I was in college.
I have a terrible memory because I'm not interested in the past. It's done, it's done.
Throwing money at something doesn't really create - forgive me that onerous word - art.
I didn't go into the theater to be a producer, I went into the theater to be a director.
I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.
I always had a good time in theatre, even when shows don't turn out as well as I'd like.
Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.
I've seen a lot of 'Show Boats,' but I've never seen the one that thoroughly satisfies me.
I really don't spend time thinking about the past. I think about the future. I'm not stopping.
There have always been revivals. Some have always been successful. And many of them have failed.
Nothing is staged exactly as it was, because I can't remember - and I consider that an advantage.
The perfect expression of receiving a lifetime award is to be working when they're handing it out.
I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.
What's missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on.
There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.
Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don’t think that’s a good trend for the theater at all.
Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don't think that's a good trend for the theater at all.
I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.
I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.
It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class. If you're not, then you have to hustle-and that's good.
I don't look back. I look forward and plan new shows. That's really feeding the most important part of working in the theater.
You think, 'Musicals, they must always be romantic' - You'd be surprised how few of them historically have ever been romantic.
I'm a pragmatic man. I'll veer on the dangerous side, because I love dangerous subjects, but I won't shoot a show in the foot.
It's nice to stay up nights worrying about the material, and not about the investors who gave you $10 million to do your musical.
I don't like abrasion while I'm working. I don't thrive on chaos. I enjoy what I'm doing, and it seems to work better when I am enjoying it.
Most of the big money people don't know what would interest an audience if you did it. They only know what interested the audience last time.
The truth is, for some absurd reason, no one is willing to admit that the interests of the producers and the theater owners are not the same.
I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.
The idea that I have to be on the same side of the fence as Dan Quayle is cruelly depressing to me, but the truth is, I believe in family values.
The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.
It's fine when you careen off disasters and terrifyingly bad reviews and rejection and all that stuff when you're young; your resilience is just terrific.
When I was a 25-year-old kid, I raised $260,000 for my first show, 'The Pajama Game,' in such a homemade, pathetic, endearing way - a buck here, a buck there.
I feel so much more comfortable when I'm working on material which makes other people scratch their heads and ask, 'You're going to make a musical out of that?'
I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.
Nobody has yet proven that taking a chance and doing something unique that an audience isn't used to is a bad idea. What the theater lacks is that kind of courage.
I wouldn't be here if it weren't for 'Show Boat.' The kind of theater I chose to be involved in is completely a direct reflection of what 'Show Boat' made possible.
Lyrics can't do what they do - or should do - when you're creating a musical with rock lyrics. There's plenty of room for rock musicals, just not all rock musicals.
I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present.
There's no lack of talent out there. I suspect there is a lack of creative guidance, and that would not be solely the responsibility of a director but also a producer.
Everything can't be a postage-stamp-sized project. Everything can't be a chamber piece. Musicals aren't even meant to be that, or identified with it... It's none of it simple.