JAMES LAPINE

I am an off-Broadway, nonprofit kind of guy.

I did 'Impromptu,' which was a thrill and a horror all at once - my first movie and having to do it in Paris, and my wife wrote it, and I had some difficulties on the set, blah, blah, blah.

When you're trying out on Broadway, it's very hectic, and you're making changes night after night. There's a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you're writing for actors who are in it - and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.

I'm never so into the three-act movie thing. I know that's the form that people talk about, but it seems to me, in the movie, you just have to keep charging forward. You couldn't start over again like you do after an intermission. You just had to keep the plot moving forward.

I was a youngish man entering fatherhood when we wrote 'Woods,' a patchwork of classic fairy tales with an original tale sewn in. I had dedicated my libretto to my baby daughter.

I've ended up working with Disney a lot, which is kind of peculiar. In theater, I've done a couple of projects with them and written a couple movies and whatnot.

I just don't really think of career. I've never been driven by career.

I think visually... so, even when I'm writing a play, I'm envisioning it.

Something I like to do is watch someone else do their thing.

The nice thing about the theatre is you can always change it. With a movie, once it's there, you're stuck with it.

I am thrilled to receive the Sondheim Award from the wonderful Signature Theatre. I have already received the invaluable gift of over twenty-five years of collaboration and friendship with Steve. Now I get to have his award, too!

When you grow up, you don't realize that your parents are any different than anybody else's. And their behavior - you have nothing to compare it to. So that is what normal is, even if it's abnormal.

You can't be theoretical when you're building a musical.

If you're like me and nosy, you're always eavesdropping on other people's conversations.

I don't do movie junket-y things, because I don't really do movies that much.

Good musicals, a strange world, seem so easy. People say, 'Ohhh, it's magic.' Nothing's magic. A thing doesn't jell. Adapt. Change the rhythm. Shorten the scene. Rewrite the character. Maneuver the waters. Seeming easy is why so many shows aren't good.

I'm a hippie child of the '60s. What drives me crazy about mass media entertainment is that it's so often devoid of any ideas.

In most audience-participation shows, the participant is so clearly not a part of what's going on that it's the fish-out-of-water aspect that makes it funny.

I designed a theater magazine that was full of plays and essays about the theater, and then I worked at a theater school. By osmosis or something, I was learning from reading plays and not being analytical about them, but when I would read them, the joy in me was mostly from imagining them in my head and visualizing them.

I like the stage challenges of having somebody literally falling apart before your very eyes.

The music is the emotional substance of the show; the book just sets it up. Nobody goes to a musical to hear the book. That's the way it works.

We live in an era of reinvention: Madonna and everybody desperately trying to change their persona.

I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.

I love the visual aspect of the theater. But I like what people have to say, too.

I'm drawn to dreams.