Theatrical Success Quotes

Playing Fagin in the play and film was a small miracle.

When you do an hour and a half and you destroy, like tonight was great. I had an awesome time. I realized that I'd been up there for about an hour and a half and I realized, "Wow, I'm gonna get out of here without doing Walken." It is a bit of a moral victory.

I knew I'd just done one of the most amazing things that I will ever get a chance to do. Just to be part of a musical that's not your background and to pull it off and to think that we've done something that's really special.

Every time 'Lady Macbeth' and everyone involved in the film gets nominated, it's amazing.

'Bodies' remains the drama I'm most proud of.

I seem to belong to a boom moment of playwrights, and I'm always curious about how we all got here and what comes next.

Soul of the age! The applause! delight! The wonder of our stage!

When 'Next to Normal' won the Pulitzer, that was the moment I felt the show was being defined. There's a certain confidence that comes with being selected.

When you're in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.

I didn't know I'd ever write a Broadway musical.

To get to do a West End play is once in a lifetime chance.

No good play is a success; fine writing and high morals are useless on the stage. I have been scribbling twaddle for thirty-five years to suit the public taste, and I should know.

I graduated on a Friday. By Monday, I was doing Shakespeare in the Park.

They say an actor is only as good as his parts. Well, my parts have done me pretty well, darling.

No actor wants to play to an empty house.

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first.

In '75, the year both A Chorus Line and Chicago hit Broadway, my head spun around and I became the ultimate theater queen for life.

It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.

The fame of Maria Foote's beauty and charm of manner had reached London, and in May 1814, she made her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre and personated Amanthis in 'The Child of Nature' with such grace and effect that the manager complimented her with an immediate engagement.

If it's a low-brow bawdy comedy, it's got to stand the chance of succeeding as such. If it's an intellectual piece, a drama, and so forth. And of course, once you've determined the level of the piece, do it the best you know how. And then don't make concessions. To audiences, or to pursestrings, or whatever.

Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.

I grew up dreaming of being on Broadway and being able to do that - and 'Hamilton' - was awesome, and it was the hardest thing for the first few weeks, and then it was the easiest thing.

A play gets on Broadway by fluke. And you don't even start out with that ambition. When I do a play, the intention is just to put it up somewhere.

When you do a good theatrical production, sometimes you dream about that 8 o'clock curtain call for six months.

As the book writer for one big smash and one big smelly flop, I always wondered if anyone knows just what goes into making a great musical. When a show is a hit, the critics trip over themselves not knowing who to laud and applaud the loudest. It's that marvelous score, those urbane lyrics, that irreplaceable star. But only when a show is a flop, does anyone notice the book writer. And then it's always our fault.