Will the theater disappear? No. Is it healthy? Also no.
The hope is that in rediscovering 'Chicago,' audiences will rediscover what theater was. It was sophisticated, complicated, adult.
Any show that's bringing in a young audience is doing a good thing, because that's the only way that theater will continue to grow. All the other audience members are going to be dead soon!
Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don't think that's a good trend for the theater at all.
I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.
We all need to go to good theater; that is what I believe will save it.
Although the 'New York Times' annually declares that Broadway is on its deathbed, news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. There's a lot of life yet in the old tart.
I was the illegitimate child of the legitimate theater. I had no training. I came from downtown rock and roll, and when I came in and auditioned for the Broadway revival of 'Hair,' I had no eyebrows - kind of a Bowie-esque glimmer kid. And it was hard representing the flower power era when we were stone cold punks.
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.
'Hamilton' has restored my faith in theater.
No producer should revive a play unless they have a very good reason for it. I think there's quite enough about a good play to make it available to new audiences.
When 'The Sound of Music' aired live on NBC, 18 million people were talking about theater the next day. That's incredible. 'Grease' felt like a chance for me to participate in that landscape.
It is Ireland's sacred duty to send over, every few years, a playwright to save the English theater from inarticulate glumness.
I really like reaching out and seeing the audience - they're potential audiences! And on occasion I can make them excited about going to the theater again, if they've ceased or gone less.
I miss Broadway, what little there is on Broadway now.
The League of Independent Theater represents a coming together of actual artistic and theatrical forces that may yet undo the difficulty of our times in maintaining the highest artistic standards in a period of economic crisis. Who can save us from the downhill trend of our economy except the vigor of our arts? Theatre, music and education are our only hopes to lift our times beyond their despair and create a viable, prosperous culture.
At this point the theater America is in such a precarious place.
I had to drop a boulder to wake people up about the A.R.T. We've done that, and now we have audiences again who want cutting-edge work, who want to be challenged, but who also won't be falling asleep at the theater.
I would absolutely love to do a revival of 'Bury the Dead' by Irwin Shaw on Broadway, but it would have to be Joe Calarco's version that we did Off-Broadway at The Transport Group in 2008. It was just one of those amazing shows that didn't run long enough and not nearly enough people got a chance to see.
A 'Looking' musical would completely bring me back to Broadway. I would come back in a second.
