George C. Wolfe Quotes

The wonderful thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. The worst thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. That dynamic is thrilling and challenging every time you make a show.

- George C. Wolfe

I feel like I've been very blessed in the sense that I've had the veracity of spirit to not be stopped and, at the same time, the protective energy and the generosity of those who have come before me, who saw something inside of me and, therefore, invited me into rooms that I would not have been inside of otherwise.

- George C. Wolfe

It's easier to be cynical and edgy and tough rather than overly emotional.

- George C. Wolfe

You've got to make the rehearsal room very safe. You can't bully people, because if you bully people, they're going to freeze and lock up.

- George C. Wolfe

Always, when I do a play, there's got to be an equation of risks and potential failure. When you're working on a new play, it's like, 'How the hell do I do this, and do we have the time?' All of these huge questions engage, hopefully, the smartest part of me. And then when you're doing a revival, I went, 'Well, somebody's already solved it.'

- George C. Wolfe

To want to come to New York, you have to have a sense of wonder about the world and a foolish sense of worth about yourself. And I, too, had both of those things.

- George C. Wolfe

When 'Jelly's' went out on tour, no one really wanted it. It was undersold. And I knew if I gave 'Noise' to someone else, they would sell it as 'Stomp' with little dancing black boys.

- George C. Wolfe

Generally, the realm in which black playwrights have been allowed to achieve success has been social realism or musicals.

- George C. Wolfe

Each actor, every single time you work with an actor, you have to come up with the language that's going to serve them. And that's what allows them to give the performance that you want to nurture inside of them and what you think they're capable of giving.

- George C. Wolfe

I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.

- George C. Wolfe

Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon.

- George C. Wolfe

Certain things come to me; I just become intrigued by them and want to live inside them.

- George C. Wolfe

'You Gotta Have Heart' is one of the most ridiculously perfect, amazing musical comedy songs ever.

- George C. Wolfe

If you have the talent and passion and commitment, you shouldn't be locked out of the room.

- George C. Wolfe

I think there's an aspect of my soul, of my personality, that's very suited to directing. I like being in the room with actors; I love creating a safe space and a chaotic space for the discovery to take place. I love creating a sense of community.

- George C. Wolfe

I'm interested in exploring how an individual maintains a sense of power in a world that tends to make individuals feel powerless.

- George C. Wolfe

One thing I tend to do is ask actors tons and tons of questions to try to get at what they're thinking but also to expose to them whatever box they've placed their characters in - to blow up that box so the journey can begin.

- George C. Wolfe

I really don't find revivals very interesting because I like new work a lot. I feel like if you're going to pay me, then let me do what I do and let me try to solve some problems. Let me try to make something fly. Why would I do something that everybody has already done the hard work on? But that's me. Tons of people do revivals really well.

- George C. Wolfe

I don't go, like, 'Hmm, I'm now going to create something for the black community.' I just feel this compelling urge. I just feel myself drawn to stories that I feel have a potency and immediacy.

- George C. Wolfe

There is a real affection for these human beings on these stage that O'Neill really had. Out of that affection comes a lot of humor, which is unexpected when you think of 'The Iceman Cometh.'

- George C. Wolfe

In the early '90s or so, I drove my father to Providence, Ky., his hometown, and he was pointing out, 'That's where the doctor's office was,' and 'That's where we bought ice cream.' And he was pointing to empty lots. When you lose communities, what do you have? We often survive by remembering the stories.

- George C. Wolfe

A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence.

- George C. Wolfe

AIDS is a shared truth - it's not selective in its wrath.

- George C. Wolfe

When I came to New York, I told everyone I was a writer/director, and they said, 'No.' There was a rule. You could be one or the other. They ordained me writer. But then I won the Obie for directing 'Spunk,' and the rules changed.

- George C. Wolfe

Every play is rhythmic control. If you want an audience to go on a journey, it's rhythmic control. You're crafting when they lean in, when they push back, when they breathe, when they surrender.

- George C. Wolfe

To me, 'Show Boat' was the first American musical, the first to have the real texture of this country.

- George C. Wolfe

I pride myself on being available to as many people's stories as I possibly can.

- George C. Wolfe

Most musicals are informed by very rigid archetypes. If you get a very sophisticated mind writing them, you sense something else, but it's a folk-art form, really, at its best. At different times, I've tried to push against it as much as I possibly could, but ultimately, it is a folk-art form.

- George C. Wolfe

The rules I sort of live by for my theater career, which I hope to live for my film career, is that if there's something that intrigues me or fascinates me, or I don't know how to do it, then I should do it.

- George C. Wolfe

I was obsessed with New York early on. I was watching sitcoms that were set in or around New York, like 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I was always very fascinated with the people who were on 'What's My Line?' and I always had an incredible obsession with the city.

- George C. Wolfe

I love working with a set designer because, in many respects, you meet the set designer before you meet the actors. So it's a chance for me as a director to figure out what I'm thinking and to explore how the space is going to actually be activated.

- George C. Wolfe

I've always tried to do shows in a filmic way. I like it when forms smack up against each other.

- George C. Wolfe

You can go see ballet in its purity; you can go to a recital to hear music by itself. But what the American musical does so thrillingly is bastardize these forms into something that is exhilarating and compelling and deeply moving.

- George C. Wolfe

'Jelly,' more than any black musical before it, celebrated the majesty, the purity, the joy of so many artists who are unable to fully embody these same qualities in their own lives.

- George C. Wolfe

There is a strange kind of parental pride when 'Topdog' ends up on Broadway, or 'Elaine Stritch.'

- George C. Wolfe

One of the things I learned very early on was that if you cast the show correctly, and if you've created the right energy in the room, the solution is also in the room. The solution doesn't necessarily come from someone, but if everybody is working in a very steadfast and rigorous way, then everything you're looking for is in the room.

- George C. Wolfe

A lot of directors tend to manipulate actors' vulnerability to get what they want, and that can work.

- George C. Wolfe

If you love theatre, do theatre wherever you can, because theatre is theatre, and you can experience it anywhere.

- George C. Wolfe

Ultimately, theatre is about creating a sense of wonder, and I think wonder is achieved not by a kind of wide-eyed silliness but by being available to that which is most unknown, inside the material and inside yourself.

- George C. Wolfe

I think all creative people are operating from the fear that, of the best of what they did, will anybody remember it? Will anybody tell stories about them? Will anybody keep those pictures on the mantle long after they are gone? It's why people write stories. It's peoples' grave markers.

- George C. Wolfe

Racists are deficient as human beings.

- George C. Wolfe

My absolutely favorite time of working on a project is the time I spend not knowing what it is. Because the longer you live inside that period, the likelier you are to discover something new.

- George C. Wolfe

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.

- George C. Wolfe

Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war.

- George C. Wolfe

A music serves truth up to you in a really interesting way that allows you to luxuriate in its beauty and, at the same time, to hopefully see yourself in its fragility.

- George C. Wolfe

Commercial theater, in its agenda to appeal to everybody, is often at the expense of the unique vision of the artist.

- George C. Wolfe

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.

- George C. Wolfe

I'm convinced whenever something opens on Broadway, it's a miracle. It's a miracle that people survived.

- George C. Wolfe

The black experience, which has nothing to do with my play 'Angels in America,' allowed me to understand the Mormon character. He was the character that couldn't come out to his mother. It allowed me to understand emotional and closeted behavior, because you're so acutely aware of how you're perceived.

- George C. Wolfe

1985 - That was my time in New York, and I have such poetic, fond memories.

- George C. Wolfe

I could program a 'fabulous, I love it' kind of hit season right now. I'm more interested in breaking boundaries, telling a story, defying a truth that has been accepted.

- George C. Wolfe

I'm more attracted to art that smashes than I am attracted to art that sits on a shelf and is beautiful.

- George C. Wolfe

When I was little, I remember rehearsing starving so that when I got to New York I would know how to do it.

- George C. Wolfe

I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent.

- George C. Wolfe

I'm perpetually interested by living in places as an artist confronting challenges I've never confronted before and approaching them with as much craft and humanity as I can.

- George C. Wolfe

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

- George C. Wolfe

Musicals spring forth from minstrelsy, vaudeville, melodramas; it was all these things combined to create the form.

- George C. Wolfe

The worst thing when you're working is to say, 'I have a question,' and the other person goes, 'No! This is what it is.' That kind of rigidity is very challenging because musicals are constantly mutating.

- George C. Wolfe

I absolutely love working on musicals, but anytime I finish a project, I want to move on to something completely different.

- George C. Wolfe

When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.

- George C. Wolfe

The world doesn't see a lot of gray. The world sees black and white, and then it understands.

- George C. Wolfe

As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.

- George C. Wolfe

You adjust what you do depending on the actor. You evolve a vocabulary and a way of language and talking with each actor.

- George C. Wolfe

All the things that can happen to an artist regardless of how prepared they are and how smart they are and hard-working they are and attractive - doesn't matter. There's always somebody cuter. There just is.

- George C. Wolfe

Broadway was very vital back in the '20s. There were probably close to hundreds of productions that opened up through the course of the year and through the course of a Broadway season.

- George C. Wolfe

There are a lot of people who will tell you I'm very ruthless. I'm very fierce. If I feel I'm right, if I feel I've been violated, then I am like a warrior from hell!

- George C. Wolfe

I came to New York to write and direct, and when I got here, a lot of my rage came out.

- George C. Wolfe

With actors, I have very close, intense working relationships with actors in theater.

- George C. Wolfe

I like to knock down walls and allow others to enter.

- George C. Wolfe

Anytime you create art, you create a mess. I mean, 'Hamlet' is a mess!

- George C. Wolfe

When 'The Normal Heart' first appeared, the sense of urgency was so important.

- George C. Wolfe

At the end of the day, 'Shuffle Along' is about people coming together and making something extraordinary - and history not necessarily being kind to them. It's about the love of necessarily being kind to them. It's about the love of doing, regardless of the consequences.

- George C. Wolfe

Confidence comes in going on personal journeys in a public arena and feeling as though you have a right to do that. You have to give yourself permission to discover what you need to discover and not worry about how pretty the journey is. If you're aware of the pretty, you're not going to dig into the mess.

- George C. Wolfe

I personally am a very big fan of 'Romeo + Juliet.' It had a visceral power to it that I thought was just exhilarating. It was a very arresting and very disturbing and deeply compelling version of the play.

- George C. Wolfe

I'm the most democratic fascist you'll ever meet. I listen to everybody, and then I make a decision.

- George C. Wolfe

Every single wave, when I was overwhelmed and poor and struggling in New York, there were these extraordinary people in New York who said, 'Come this way.'

- George C. Wolfe

My first play, 'The Colored Museum,' was done in '86 at the Public Theater.

- George C. Wolfe

Producing has empowered me as an artist in a specific way. It's forced a certain kind of maturity.

- George C. Wolfe

I think I am the first person of color to direct a major white play on Broadway. In 1993? That's astounding to me. And horrifying to me.

- George C. Wolfe

A musical is what happens when text collides with motion collides with song collides with spectacle. And spectacle can be the human heart; it doesn't necessarily have to be a helicopter crashing.

- George C. Wolfe

Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way.

- George C. Wolfe

Growing up in the South, I was raised to be a Negro boy. I was acutely aware how other people perceived me, and that informed my behavior. That worked for a period of time, but it could also be suffocating.

- George C. Wolfe

On different projects, different pieces of you will show up. Sometimes it's surprising which piece shows up.

- George C. Wolfe

I feel like I'm edgy and I'm funny and I got this bite, this outrageousness.

- George C. Wolfe

The hardest thing about a musical is making sure everybody is working on the same damn show. That is the monster.

- George C. Wolfe

When I was on dialysis, I willed myself to do 'On the Town.' It accesses my most childlike, joyful love of theater.

- George C. Wolfe

I was raised to believe that other people's suffering was my responsibility.

- George C. Wolfe

Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole.

- George C. Wolfe

If I hadn't told stories, I would've been a historian.

- George C. Wolfe

I want to create a theater that looks, feels, and smells like America.

- George C. Wolfe

There's no place more theatrical than history.

- George C. Wolfe

Everybody wants to be remembered for the best of who they are.

- George C. Wolfe

Theater should address the stories of its communities, or I don't know why it's here.

- George C. Wolfe

I think we all have a primal desire to know as much as we can to find out about where we come from.

- George C. Wolfe

The only rule of a musical is that it must maintain its buoyancy.

- George C. Wolfe

Our lives are connected in ways we can't imagine. They're connected even before we know they're connected.

- George C. Wolfe

I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.'

- George C. Wolfe