Stephen Sondheim Quotes

Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.

With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.

Before 'Memphis,' I had never considered working on a musical. But when Joe DiPietro sent me the script, I heard the entire score in my head.

Movies, there are moments when you're writing a song or demoing, a moment in the recording studio. Musicals much more just eat up your life for a certain period of time.

In theater, there's a lot of work to do to build the characters. It's a great experience.

My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story.

That's the difference between working on film and working in a play. In a play, you work on it, and you live in it and develop it and make it happen.

I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?

What I always loved about theater is that that's an experience that a company of actors just sinks itself into for weeks, and you really get to work on the material, and by the time you're in front of an audience, you really own it.

I love plays that have musical moments. I'm not a big fan of musicals per se, but I love straight plays that have musical edges to them. I don't know if I will ever be able to structure a musical, but 'Finer Noble Gases' is as close as I've gotten.

In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.

If a script is good, you are 10 steps into the part just reading it. But my choices are not all down to my taste. It is about people you have worked with before.

With film roles, it just has to be a character either I haven't done before, or a role with somebody really interesting or with an interesting person or group of people.

I think every actor would probably say that it's always a collaboration. And if you ask directors, they'll tell you that they expect the actors to bring something. They don't want to be thinking for everybody.

The good thing about helping an actor create a performance is, you really don't know how you're going to do it. It's a challenge every time you get to the set. That keeps the energy flowing all the time.

I can't be enthusiastic as soon as I write something on the music sheet. The music sheet is only the beginning: it has to be listened to, played by the instruments, and then heard by the director, but most importantly, it has to be listened to by the public.

It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process.

I think one of the biggest jobs of being a director is getting the casting right.

I love to combine first-time actors with seasoned actors.

It takes a damn village to get a show on Broadway!

My whole thing is, you listen to the actor and help them bring out their best thing.

Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.

I loved 'Les Miz' and 'Into the Woods' - I used to cast 'Into the Woods' with my friends, even if they'd never stepped on stage before.

A musical is really one of the most complicated beasts. It's a play, and there's music... and there's dancing... it's unbelievably satisfying to get something up out of your brain onto a piece of paper ... and start the process and then see it on the stage.

I've enjoyed lots of productions, and it's always been down to the actors I've been working with.