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.
I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.
Something that can be so vital at one point can be inconsequential at another. I'm just intrigued by that phenomenon.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
With actors, I have very close, intense working relationships with actors in theater.
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.
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.'
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.
I absolutely love working on musicals, but anytime I finish a project, I want to move on to something completely different.
Everybody wants to be remembered for the best of who they are.
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.
If I hadn't told stories, I would've been a historian.
I came to New York to write and direct, and when I got here, a lot of my rage came out.
Surviving failure is one thing. Surviving success is... is challenging, with the consequences and what you lose along the way.
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.
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.
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.'
