George C. Wolfe Quotes

• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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