Theater Evolution Quotes

I believe we have to bring Broadway a little Latino flair. We have to keep it alive.

Theater originated with technology. People forget that.

Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.

Theater is a living creature. It takes a while to break in, like a new pair of shoes.

The hope is that in rediscovering 'Chicago,' audiences will rediscover what theater was. It was sophisticated, complicated, adult.

My interest in theater really began in the '70s when American realism wasn't really in favor. I really dreaded going into a play that had a toaster that worked. I just didn't want to see that.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as Off-Broadway. You either got your show on or you didn't.

There's a real passing down in the theater, almost ad nauseam. You have to listen to older people talk about their experience, but it makes you very aware of what has come before you or what is coming after you - that you're a part of a link in a chain. It's not all about you.

I would like, if I can, to broaden the possibilities of the musical theater. I think there's a better 'Oklahoma!' someplace, a better 'West Side Story.' And I'd like to be mixed up in it.

Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place.

I think 'Hand to God' is going to change the landscape of Broadway. I think Broadway, truthfully, will never be the same.

In a very complex way, things have improved in the dramatic field. Before you had the good and the bad and you couldn't mingle them. Now it's more ambiguous.

Eugene O'Neil created an American theater, and Tennessee Williams taught it how to sing.

When I was on stage in the '50s, it was a glory time, a golden time with Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. There was real talent. And now, the theater is a little Disney-fied.

In the 1920s dramatists attacked their subjects as if the inequities could be resolved. Some of the traditional optimism of America lurked behind most of the early plays. But not now. There is no conviction now that the problem will be solved.

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.

I am sure if you went back to the days of 'My Fair Lady,' they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that. Now you have people tweeting and blogging immediately, so you may as well regard your first preview as your opening night because you are going to get reviews.

Musicals are written and then rewritten. Those things used to happen on the road. Now they are done in New York during preview performances.

I'd love to go back to Greek times and see the birth of theater and performing, in that time. It would be so extraordinary to see the need that theater came out of, in the first place. I think we could probably all learn a bit from that.

When the Appollonian strain took over in Greece, they made them into theaters and the original dramas.

The trick is to have my own particular taste and feel for the theater to audiences who have been used to one particular style and taste for nearly 40 years.

Variety shows didn't disappear; it was the caliber of the artists, the classic vaudevillians that have passed on. They are gone, so there's a different caliber performer that's come along that hasn't had the time to work in the small clubs and get the experience.

American radio is the reverse of the Shakespearean stage. In Shakespeare's time the world's greatest dramas were acted with the most primitive technical arrangements; on the American air the world's most primitive writing is performed under perfect technical conditions.

I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.

Sometimes I feel like 'Avenue Q' or even 'Book of Mormon' might not have happened without 'Urinetown.' 'Urinetown' sort of paved the way, just in terms of what Broadway would accept in its houses. It just blows my mind, the stuff 'Book of Mormon' gets away with. It's way farther across the line than 'Urinetown' ever was.