Phillipa Soo Quotes

'Hamilton' is one of the best things I've ever seen on a stage, and for a guy who loves American history, hip-hop and theater, it was pure bliss.

My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.

It's valuable to me as an artist and actor to explore all kinds of outlets. So if a local filmmaker in Milwaukee had a good story, I'd be part of it in a second.

My only responsibility as a playwright and a storyteller is to give you the time of your life in the theatre. I just happen to think that with Hamilton's story, sticking close to the facts helps me. All the most interesting things in the show happened.

I love TV and I love making films and I love doing plays. I feel very lucky to be able to do all three.

We speak about understanding each other, having those conversations nationwide - culturally, historically - and yet there's a lot of gaps. So I want to assist with closing the gap of knowing about and hearing about our Latino communities in terms of literature, in terms of writing.

I write, but I also act.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

I was lucky enough to see the original cast of 'In the Heights.' This one blew my mind. The infusion of Latin, hip hop and rap with musical theatre, great storytelling and talent was a powerful combination to me during a time when I'd not been moved by much!

I think going from doing TV and straight plays to Shakespeare is weird enough because you have this heightened language, and you are telling a story through metric poetry. But I think music is that place beyond poetry.

I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience.

I'm always interested in looking - historically - at how theater can animate history and how all of that can make us engage with our lives in an enriching way.

I never thought of myself in comedy at all... I loved going to the theatre and seeing people wearing beautiful clothes come down the staircase and start to dance.

I'm interested in working with groups of actors to tell complicated stories about what's happening to people, and that's because I came out of the theatre where I worked in ensembles, and I really loved that.

Stepping back into theatre, a childhood dream, I always felt like I would be onstage. I hadn't imagined myself in a composer role... I find it so satisfying to be behind the scenes and writing the music and watching it elevated and characterized by different voices than my own. It's so exciting.

Theatre, for me, is about providing to the audience a new and exciting experience.

With 'Hamilton,' what's cool about the show is that even super-old white people come to see the show and hang on every word, it's that good.

Right out of school, I did this show called 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.' It is based on a classical text with new music - not necessarily confined by a certain genre. It was a diverse, interesting group of musicians, actors, nonactors, and singers all creating this thing that is bigger than all of us.

An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.

What I try to do in my picture books is to be all-inclusive, but not exclusive, to not exclude the kid and not exclude the parents from the experience. And it's not a very easy task; you can't find stories that work that way too much of the time.

I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.

Drama - what literature does at night.

I think you'll find a lot of actors will be interested in history because it sparks your imagination so much. When you enter a period of history, your imagination just goes wild in creating the world, which is really what acting is.

I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave. Miami is special for that. It's a city where you don't know if it's more a part of the US, or of the Caribbean, or of Latin America, or of Europe.

I think there's that weird bastardization where musical theatre actors are treated as almost like vaudevillians or circus performers - that we're somehow not good actors because we sing and dance.