Theater Innovation Quotes

Theater will cast in a more open way; Denzel Washington might play Richard III. Television and film don't really cast openly like that. The theater world has always been a leader in diversity.

Mostly, theater becomes blander and blander as everyone wants the same thing they saw before. The good plays are the ones that don't allow you to do that.

I suppose that I'm excited by exciting theater. It takes a risk to show us the world in a new way.

What Lou Tyrrell creates when he has a theater is a birthing center for new plays.

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

I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.

I'm trying to bring a new generation into the musical theater and to create a new audience.

I would just like to mention Robert Houdin who in the eighteenth century invented the vanishing birdcage trick and the theater matinee - may he rot and perish. Good afternoon.

I like to originate new roles and characters for musical theater.

It may take a while, but I think 'On the Town' has the potential for us to break down the boundaries between the traditional theatergoer who may have fond memories of the musical and those with a 'Broadway-is-not-for-me' agenda.

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.

Audience participation should extend from on-stage to backstage to under the stage

The mission of the A.R.T. is to expand the boundaries of theater through works of the canon and the new works of tomorrow.

The idea of doing a production of 'Carousel' that doesn't feel like it's stuck in the 1950s really intrigues me.

I would like to see more new productions of new material by new composers/lyricists/book writers. I would like to see people take more chances. I think because everything costs so much they're not taking the chances they used to.

We thought it would be great to see if you could put pop music back into musical theater.

Imagine if Lin-Manuel Miranda had tried to do 'Hamilton' first in Hollywood. They would have told him, 'The forefathers weren't Latino or black. They didn't speak in hip hop.' That would never had gotten going in Hollywood ever. But theater let Lin-Manuel him do it, and he created an incredible masterpiece.

As an actor, you generally don't get to choose what projects you are part of, so I've been very fortunate that 'The Book of Mormon' was something I got to be part of. I don't want to be lofty, but it was groundbreaking, in many ways, for musical theater, so that was really thrilling to be part of.

When I was growing up in the '80s and working in the theater, David Mamet exploded with a whole new reworking of what dialogue should sound like. It was punchy and raw and repetitive, bursting with dynamic. I remember that switching on a lot of lights for me.

The musical theater is a glorious and distinctly American innovation in the history of theater.

It is such a joy to join a legacy of amazing female playwrights who have managed to break through the glass ceiling and reinvigorate the Broadway stage by bringing a fresh and necessary perspective.

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for 'Show Boat.' The kind of theater I chose to be involved in is completely a direct reflection of what 'Show Boat' made possible.

We always love actors taking unexpected turns.

I feel like there's an obsession with pace right now in theater, with things being very fast and very witty and very loud, and I think we're all so freaked out about theater keeping audiences interested because everybody's so freaked out about theater becoming irrelevant.

The avant-garde theater is fun; it is free-wheeling, bold, iconoclastic, and often wildly, wildly funny. If you will approach it with childlike innocence -- putting your standard responses aside, for they do not apply -- if you will approach it on its own terms, I think you will be in for a liberating surprise. I think you may no longer be content with plays that you can't remember halfway down the block.