Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
By the time I was ten, everyone knew I wanted to be a producer. I was a very precocious little boy.
An old building is like a show. You smell the soul of a building. And the building tells you how to redo it.
I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.
What's missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on.
There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.
Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don’t think that’s a good trend for the theater at all.
Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don't think that's a good trend for the theater at all.
The older people carry the music in their body, in their mind. If they die, then that sound may be gone forever.
The primary function of a theatre is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent.
The primary function of a theater is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent.
I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.
I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.
Without an elite in the arts, we have no leaders, which is to say we have no vision, which is to say we have no arts.
The first 50 years are for learning, and the second 50 years are for living. Life just begins when you're in your 50s.
It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class. If you're not, then you have to hustle-and that's good.
I don't look back. I look forward and plan new shows. That's really feeding the most important part of working in the theater.
You think, 'Musicals, they must always be romantic' - You'd be surprised how few of them historically have ever been romantic.
I'm a pragmatic man. I'll veer on the dangerous side, because I love dangerous subjects, but I won't shoot a show in the foot.
The invention of film has given our generation the dubious advantage of watching our acting heroes deteriorate before our eyes.
the power of radio is not that it speaks to millions, but that it speaks intimately and privately to each one of those millions.
It's nice to stay up nights worrying about the material, and not about the investors who gave you $10 million to do your musical.
No enlightened person would deny its premise, but as an ongoing program it is monotonous, limited, locked in a perception of victimization.
I don't like abrasion while I'm working. I don't thrive on chaos. I enjoy what I'm doing, and it seems to work better when I am enjoying it.
Most of the big money people don't know what would interest an audience if you did it. They only know what interested the audience last time.
The truth is, for some absurd reason, no one is willing to admit that the interests of the producers and the theater owners are not the same.
I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.
I don't commit to things unless I have my A-team to do it. And I'm not trying to be cocky, but that shows in my productions. They are top notch!
The idea that I have to be on the same side of the fence as Dan Quayle is cruelly depressing to me, but the truth is, I believe in family values.
The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.
What does so-called success or failure matter if only you have succeeded in doing the thing you set out to do. The DOING is all that really counts.
Having a think about whether you can afford 'this' or 'that' is a good discipline to have, to maximise what you can achieve to the highest standard.
It's fine when you careen off disasters and terrifyingly bad reviews and rejection and all that stuff when you're young; your resilience is just terrific.
Darling, when you're as old as I am, you cherish the very few musicals that have come your way that you know are great classics. You become their guardian.
I don't want this music to die.The older people are passing it on to the younger generation so the younger generation can pass it on to the next generation.
I'm proud of the fact that I've taken a lot of big directors, such as Trevor Nunn and Nick Hytner, who were musical virgins, and introduced them to the form.
When I was a 25-year-old kid, I raised $260,000 for my first show, 'The Pajama Game,' in such a homemade, pathetic, endearing way - a buck here, a buck there.
I feel so much more comfortable when I'm working on material which makes other people scratch their heads and ask, 'You're going to make a musical out of that?'
I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.
Nobody has yet proven that taking a chance and doing something unique that an audience isn't used to is a bad idea. What the theater lacks is that kind of courage.
the theater should be free to the people just as the Public Library is free, just as the museum is free. ... I want the theater to be made accessible to the people.
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.
Lyrics can't do what they do - or should do - when you're creating a musical with rock lyrics. There's plenty of room for rock musicals, just not all rock musicals.
I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present.
It horrifies me how much it costs to put on shows now, mainly due to EU regulations. The freedom to be entrepreneurial is no longer there. It's a massive business now.
There's no lack of talent out there. I suspect there is a lack of creative guidance, and that would not be solely the responsibility of a director but also a producer.
My own tastes happen to be in tune with what the public wants. I think that's the reason my batting average is so high, not because I've discovered some brilliant formula.
I know I'm in the exceptional position of having money, but I didn't have it for many decades. I'm always trying to get shows put on for 25 per cent less production costs.
Everything can't be a postage-stamp-sized project. Everything can't be a chamber piece. Musicals aren't even meant to be that, or identified with it... It's none of it simple.
Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light.
My aunt took me to see 'Salad Days' when I was seven. This story of a magic piano that infects everyone who hears it infected me, too. It was a Road to Damascus moment in my life.