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George C. Wolfe Quotes

I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me.

I'm dancing to the music of the madness inside me.

George C. Wolfe
Dance, Dancing, Madness
George C. Wolfe, Chic Street Man, Zora Neale Hurston (1991). “Two”

God created black people and black people created style.

George C. Wolfe
People, Black, Style
George C. Wolfe (1988). “The Colored Museum”, p.14, Grove Press

With music, you can create instant trust with an audience. You can hear three notes, and you surrender to it, whereas it takes you about ten minutes of language before people begin to trust you in a play.

George C. Wolfe
Play, People, Three

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. It takes you probably five to six minutes to build trust with an audience. A musical you can build trust in three notes. Boom, boom, boom, you're instantly seduced. So musicals have this easy potency, but generally, in my opinion, they waste them, because a musical is incredibly hard to do.

George C. Wolfe
Journey, Musical, Opinion
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

Any time there is a cultural breakthrough in which this culture transcends what it's supposed to be, there's a violent reaction. So we had a black president, and it's followed by an incredibly violent reaction. It happens over and over.

George C. Wolfe
Black, President, Culture
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

A friend of mine said that when Barack Obama was running for president, there was a whole generation of white kids who are used to looking up to a black person center stage speaking. And that's because of hip-hop. So there was no adjustment. A person of color in authority at times is very startling to people. But as time goes on, it becomes less startling.

George C. Wolfe
Running, Kids, People
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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

George C. Wolfe
Musical
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

I think musicals are a lowbrow, populist art form. And I don't mean lowbrow in a condescending way at all - they are designed to create delight, wonder, joy, surprise. And what becomes really interesting is when innovative or challenging or smart people take it and use the easy runway that the form allows to take people to another planet, or another place. Or subvert it in some way.

George C. Wolfe
Art, Mean, Thinking
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

I'm watching the show and I'm watching the audience watch the show. Because once you leave the rehearsal room, you have space and you can see it. You can watch them watch it. You can't see your work, really, until you're in the theater. You have no perspective. That's not part of my job, to go, "Oh my God, they're so brilliant." I'm not required to swoon.

George C. Wolfe
Perspective, Brilliant, Audience
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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
Writing, Mind, Different
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

It's very important for an audience to know where they are and why they are there in a musical. It allows them to relax and follow this form that operates in shorthand. So the economy of the form, in many respects, is why a lot of screenwriting is so sleek. Because the visuals are where the explosions happen.

George C. Wolfe
Musical, Important, Relax
Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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