Quotes from George C. Wolfe

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

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

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

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

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.'

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

There's no place more theatrical than history.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.