Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think every theater in America wants a younger audience... and you can't just hope to have a younger audience, you have to program things that audience is going to connect with.
Being a director, whether you're in rehearsal or you're in auditions or you're in a creative meeting, is so much to me about being present in the moment. There's a sense of time stopping.
In Elizabethan England or classical Athens... theater was at the center of, not culture, but society and politics and religion and civic engagement. Those things have a different audience.
There is a wealth of unexpressed love in the world. It is one of the chief causes of sorrow evoked by death: what might have been said or might have been done that never can be said or done.
Maybe it took a little time, or we're a little late, but finally we're recognizing that international stars are fantastic. They're the greatest actors in the world, and few people know that.
At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater.
I think in our culture there's been a tendency for people to blame the audience. There is a tendency in our industry to say, 'The audience has left the building. People don't want culture anymore.'
Hedonic Engineering -- The human nervous system studying and improving itself: intelligence studying and improving intelligence. Why be depressed, dumb, and agitated when you can be happy, smart, and tranquil?
The musicals that I loved, growing up - many, many. 'Singing in the Rain,' of course, is a classic, I love 'Meet Me in St. Louis.' I love 'Funny Face,' Stanley Donen's beautiful movie. It's really countless for me.
I had to drop a boulder to wake people up about the A.R.T. We've done that, and now we have audiences again who want cutting-edge work, who want to be challenged, but who also won't be falling asleep at the theater.
It was actually the opposite of what a director once said to me. He said, 'Remember, everyone is here to serve you.' And as he walked away, I thought to myself, 'It's exactly the opposite: I'm here to serve everyone.
The idea of making audiences feel like they matter, that the theatre matters, and that they're a partner in the event—that's what fuels me as a director . . . I believe it's actually radical to think about the audience.
When musicals don't work, they really don't work. But when they work, and someone is singing because they can't speak anymore, or they're dancing because they can't move anymore, moving is not enough to express - it's this beautiful thing.
[Carrie Fisher] could talk about issues that very few people could. She could make her bipolar disorder both real and entertaining. Carrie deserves a lot of credit for giving voice to traumas that few people feel comfortable talking about.
This is an extremely foolish and stupid and idiotic kind of attitude - to expect theatres to make money. Do the public schools make money? Do libraries make money? Does the zoo make money? D o the sewers make money? It's a community service.
I was very aware of the fact we were so out of fashion when I shot 'Chicago.' And I was trepidatious as to whether it would be seen or embraced by anybody, but I've never stopped believing in the genre. There's nothing like it. It's American-born.
I knew ART was was going to give me this opportunity to expand my role as a director and finally let me have a seat at the table where I could get involved in these policy discussions and producing discussions and, frankly, the financial discussions.
When movement isn't enough, you dance, or when speaking isn't enough, you sing. When it's organic, and it's earned like that in a musical, that's when it works, and then there's nothing like it because it's this thing that takes you to a whole 'nother level, you know?
I'm very aware of the fact that Broadway musicals being brought to the screen are very few and far between, and it's important to continue that relationship between Broadway and film. It's a privilege and an honor for me to be instrumental in some way in keeping that alive.
For me, the reason why people go to a mountaintop or go to the edge of the ocean is to look at something larger than themselves. That feeling of awe, of going to a cathedral, it's all about feeling lost in something bigger than oneself. To me, that's the definition of spectacle.
The more internal freedom you achieve, the more you want: it is more fun to be happy than sad, more enjoyable to choose your own emotions than to have them inflicted on you by mechanical glandular processes, more pleasurable to solve your problems than to be stuck with them forever.
Look at where I lived! Four blocks from Lincoln Center. I used to play in the fountain. And then I started taking dance lessons. I was in 'The Nutcracker' for the N.Y. City Ballet when I was 8 and dancing in 'The Firebird' for George Balanchine when I was 9. Believe me, that's something you don't ever forget.
What's interesting was with all the shows I did on Broadway, I was either the dance captain or the assistant choreographer - I sort of worked my way up to that kind of thing - and I always was interested in more than just the dancers and the numbers. I would always sneak into the room and watch the scene work.
I could talk for seven hours about Johnny Depp. There's no one like him. He has this amazing ability to watch something and then pick it up and do it, within seconds. He'll hate me for saying this, but I don't care. I'm going to say it anyway. He's Fred Astaire. He's this genius dancer. He says that he can't dance, but he can.
You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get... It's about experience and building community and catalyzing dialogue and bringing people together.
I really challenge every actor at the beginning of a process, and I always say, 'I have an idea that I'm going to bring to the table. I hope and expect that you will have an idea and bring it to the table. But the way I really want to work is that together we're going to have a third idea that is better than either of our ideas.'
With film, I always sit with people first and talk a while, and then we read or sing or whatever. I never sit behind a table. I get up; I work with them. I do everything I possibly can to not audition them. I can find out the best of them from them feeling comfortable and appreciated. I'd never let someone leave feeling not valued.
If you're looking for like, a pure base for your behavior on stage, maybe it's better to say, "Yeah, you're not obliged to pretend. But, you're also obliged to not pretend." So you have access to both sides, if you will. It's never a pure binary thing, but you can pretend. If you have total agency as a performer, then both are at your disposal.