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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Racists are deficient as human beings.”