A Quote by Maury Yeston

Back in the Stone Age, before there were workshops, it was a very difficult idea to get into musical theatre. Normally, you would be a chorus girl or boy and write something. People would get their start as rehearsal pianists or dance assistants.
My parents say it all began with my role of Percy the Polar Bear back in nursery school! I began dance classes at the age of five (you would never guess though) and then I went on to join my local theatre group, Glantawe Players, at the age of eight and then Swansea Amateur Dramatics Society. I then joined the National Youth Music Theatre, so I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in Musical Theatre!
I applied, and I got in as a pianist. Their idea in the music department was that pianists, if they were good enough to get in, they were good enough to learn a new instrument. They felt sorry for pianists being alone in the practice room all the time, and they really wanted to socialize us pianists.
If I were trying to impress a girl, I wouldn't get all super dressed because I would look like I was trying too hard. Instead, I would probably wear what I normally would.
A girl who would fall in love so easily or want a man to love her so easily would probably get over it just as quickly, very little the worse for wear. On the contrary, a girl who would take love seriously would probably be a good while finding herself in love and would require something beyond mere friendly attentions from a man before she would think of him in that light.
I wanted to write a very simple story about a boy, a wolf, a girl, a bear and a forest, so I thought I might set it in the past. I didn't realise that it went back to when I was 10: I used to love the Stone Age when I was a kid and wanted to live in it, and I got rid of my bed and slept on the floor, but I didn't remember it.
I think self-portraits are very difficult. I’ve always seen mine as straightforward, very stripped down, hair pulled back. No shirt. Whatever light happened to be available. I’d want it to be very graphic – about darkness and light. No one else should be there, but I’m scared to do it by myself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The whole idea of a self-portrait is strange. I’m so strongly linked to how I see through the camera that to get to the other side of it would be difficult. It would be as if I were taking a photograph in the dark.
I asked myself what Palestinians would do if Israel disappeared-if everything not only went back to the way it was before 1948 but if all the Jewish people abandoned the Holy Land and were scattered again. And for the first time, I knew the answer. We would still fight. Over nothing. Over a girl without a head scarf. Over who was toughest and most important. Over who would make the rules and who would get the best seat.
If someone said, "Here, you have your pick, you can do either a musical, Moulin Rouge type of movie, where you sing and dance, or an action movie, or a Shakespearian or Elizabethan movie," I would definitely love to do a movie that was based on a musical, where I would get to sing, dance and act, all at the same time.
I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.
People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually.
But for me it's very difficult to finish music on my own. It's the fear of losing the fun. It's very easy to get a sketch of something or an idea together in a very short time, to try out something new, but to get a five minute track to play out is much harder, at least for me. When I start to construct something, it often ends in frustration.
If I would get an album out every eight months and if I would write songs that were more up-tempo and try to focus more on making singles, then I could probably get more attention. But I don't think the albums would be very fun to listen to, and it would be a drag for me.
'Places to Go' is something that I would never normally write because I would usually be worried with what people would think about me.
A boy is a long time before he knows his alphabet, longer before he has learned to spell, and perhaps several years before he can read distinctly; and yet there are some people who, as soon as they get on a horse, entirely undressed and untaught, fancy that by beating and spurring they will make him a dressed horse in one morning only. I would fain ask such stupid people whether by beating a boy they would teach him to read without first showing him the alphabet? Sure, they would beat him to death, before they would make him read.
I've always drawn a lot. I like the idea of turning a 2-D sketch into a 3-D thing very quickly. And clothing is really good for that. You can draw an idea in the morning and you can see it by the end of the day. I think if it were something like a four-month process to get from the idea to the final thing, I would get quite bored.
The heartbreak that it might not happen wasn't something that I wanted to face with any more weight. Then, when I got the call to go ahead I never thought for a second as I was approaching it who I would get - that would come later. Again, I think the idea was that I now had the rights to make the movie and I can start writing it but if I have to wait another 10 years before I find an actor that's right for it, I'd be very happy to do that.
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