Top 1200 Broadway Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

As I've gotten older and I've watched people in productions, I go to the theater when I go back to London and see friends in Broadway, I think maybe there might come a time here to get back up there and prove oneself. It's just an itch; it's a nagging itch to go back there.

I had done plays all my life. Many, many, many plays, off-Broadway plays.

No one told me that if you can't sing, you probably won't be on Broadway. No one told me that!

The pigeons are shitting on George M. Cohan. I shoo them off. They fly up and perch on his hat. Cohan would've never given his regards to Broadway if he saw how dirty they kept his statue in Duffy Square. New Yorkers walk right by. Nobody cares.

I think I learned more about writing scores for Broadway by making mix tapes in the '90s than I did in college. You're learning about rise and fall and energy and tempo shifts. You're showing off your taste and your references. You're trying to be witty by - through placement of music you didn't write.

Teaching ... particularly in the 1990s, teaching what is far and away the dumbest generation in American history, is the same as walking up Broadway in Manhattan talking to yourself, except instead of eighteen people who hear you in the street talking to yourself, they're all in the room. They know, like, nothing.

Rent Control was an interesting movie. It was directed by... I had done a couple of plays off Broadway, and this Italian director came, his name was Gian Luigi Polidoro, and he determined I was the person to play the lead in his low-budget comedy. He'd won an award at the Venice Film Festival, and... He was, y'know, a skilled director.

I thought I was going to be on Broadway. I thought, 'I'm going to do theater.'

I was a weird kid. I shouldve been gay because I listened to a lot of Broadway musicals. I dont know why Im not gay. I listen to a lot of jazz and world music, like African or Cuban music. Something that has vitality to it. A lot of the American stuff just feeds on itself.

My return to the theater in New York was so specific. I didn't want it to be about leveraging my exposure or my fame, so the first show I did in New York was an ensemble piece at an Off-Broadway theater, and I wanted to make sure that it was just about the play and about the experience.

From 1985 to 1994, I lived in Manhattan in a big old loft right off Times Square. I could walk to work, which was in a couple of Broadway theaters, to Howard Stern's studio, and to 30 Rock for 'Letterman' and 'SNL.' Even in New York, walking to work is homey and folksy, like living in a small town.

For performances I have my favorite go to's like Prince, Donna Summer, Vanity 6, Sheila E, but it also depends on the type of show I am giving. I could pull references from Broadway musicals, Rock Steady Crew, a Jamaican dancehall or gentlemen's club, etc. all within one show. It truly is a playground with no restrictions for me.

It just happened that we did [Fences] seven years ago on Broadway. Scott Rudin brought me August Wilson's original screenplay for it, and I realized I hadn't read the play. So I read it. Then I realized that Troy (my character) was 53 - and I was 55 at the time. I realized I better hurry up! I might be too old!

I don't really know exactly what the plan is... I'm not a person that's just pursuing acting or just pursuing singing or just pursuing dancing. You know, I would love to do reality television, I would like to go back to Broadway.

The experience I had all those 40 years of working on Broadway and working on television, I bring it to students and I let them kind of drain me dry but they all feel at the end of the class that they are getting so much out of it. The students grow in my classroom because they feel safe. They don't feel like they're going to be yelled at.

I did green screen for the first time! I wouldn't like to do a whole movie of green screen, though. You kind of forget the plot a little - like being in a Broadway play and doing it over and over and forgetting your line halfway through.

I believe the poor fierce-eyed child had figured out that with a mere fifty dollars in her purse she might somehow reach Broadway or Hollywood - or the foul kitchen of a diner (Help Wanted) in a dismal ex-prairie state, with the wind blowing, and the stars blinking, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen, and everything soiled, torn, dead.

I went to grad school in San Francisco, and then left for New York City with my eye on Broadway. I had saved $5000, which seemed like a lot of money in my mind... until I realized it was going to take $2500 to get to New York and then the first and last month's rent.

I ended up doing three very complicated off-Broadway plays that, in certain ways, were not successes in that they were received in a complicated way. But for me they were successes because they forced me to act without singing, which I'd never done before.

Producers on Broadway approached us with an original script after relaunching ourselves as 'A Great Big World,' and wanted us to write the music. They asked us to make the music we would sing if we could, and so we can go a little crazier. We refer to it as 'our music on steroids.'

I loved being on Broadway, but performing has become exhausting, and I just don't want to live in New York anymore. I'm just sick of the competition in New York, the feeling that I always have to rehearse to keep up my performance. I don't feel like rehearsing, even though it should be my favorite thing in the world to do.

I played at Sony, Warner Bros., Universal, Big Machine, Capitol... after I played every one of those places, everyone offered me a record deal. I was just like, 'Who am I? Why do I even deserve this?' There are people busting their butts on Broadway doing this hardcore, playing three hours a night for tips, and I didn't even ask for it.

I don't stop. It's my nature. People have to tell me to slow down. I plan on playing every role on Broadway. I want to do 'Evita.' I want to do 'Sweeney Todd' with Chris Colfer. We want to do 'Wicked.' I'll be Elphaba and he wants to play 'Guy-linda.' I want to do movies, make music. 'Glee' is only the beginning.

I don't know other couples that work together a fraction as much as Nick and I do. We met in a play, and we've done TV and movies, and we just did 'Annapurna,' our off-Broadway show, and we've done theater together several times, so it's just a little bit of everything.

Black people, if I may, we don't get a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things outside the norm, outside of what is expected of us. Black women on Broadway are expected to put themselves downstage center and tear the roof off.

There have been two [career highlights]. Waking up in New York to hear I'd been nominated for Best Actor for a Tony Award on Broadway, for An Ideal Husband. The other one was waking up the morning after the opening night of A Man For All Seasons and reading the reviews.

Don't just learn one thing; learn everything about whatever you're going into. If you want to be an actor, if you want to be on Broadway, hang lights, sweep floors, sell tickets, be an usher, do everything that you can because that's where you learn your character and your craft.

Simon McBurney on "All My Sons" on Broadway - we had an eight-week rehearsal period and I really enjoyed the way that he prepared us to go onstage. It was different than anything I've done and it was a different way of being directed, so I tried to take my different experiences of these directors and give those to my actors.

There is no doubt of the essential nobility of that man who pours into life the honest vigor of his toil, over those who compose the feathery foam of fashion that sweeps along Broadway; who consider the insignia of honor to consist in wealth and indolence; and who, ignoring the family history, paint coats of arms to cover up the leather aprons of their grandfathers.

I used to do lots of independent films and for a while I was very content living in New York City and doing independent movies and off-Broadway theater. I loved it, I had a really good time doing that, and I worked on a lot of projects that are very dear to my heart, both plays and films.

I used to live in the Bronx, then I lived uptown on 106th St. and Broadway, and finally I moved to Harlem right before it became gentrified. I lived on 120th St. between Fifth and Lenox Aves. in a little brownstone. I knew the neighborhood was changing when they started putting trees in the middle of the block.

It's hard to think it's important to try out as cheerleader when you're starring on Broadway. But you do kind of miss the things that I now see my children doing. I'm just happy they are not actors. The Valentine's Day dance is really important. Pitching in Little League is very important. And the medals and the scouts are really important.

A few years later, when I was still going to these meetings, I was also "second-acting" every Broadway show [walking in with the crowd after intermission]. I snuck in to see Grease with John Travolta in kind of a secondary part and Adrienne Barbeau playing Rizzo, into Pippin, hung out with Ben Vereen and Bob Fosse. It was an amazing time for a teenager.

The Beatles have a deeper appreciation of all music. There's a humor, there's a Broadway sense, and later on, the Indian stuff came in. The Beatles were always taking in stuff and filtering stuff out to us. There's such a classical sense of arrangement, and their harmonies-what the Beatles did vocally is amazing.

I was in Jacques Brel Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with Jacques Brel doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.

Many years ago, I was in a Broadway show and I had to wear a fox fur around my shoulders. One day my hand touched one of the fox's legs. It seemed to be in two pieces. Then it dawned on me.... her leg had probally been snapped in two by the steel trap that had caught it.

When a man and a woman see each other and like each other they ought to come together - wham - like a couple of taxis on Broadway, not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle.

I had already played a lead on Broadway before I ever did a film. I had had three, four seasons of stock with good, fat parts, good supporting and leading parts. And I had done, oh, God, over 400 live TV shows.

I did a great show Off-Broadway called Leave It To Beaver Is Dead that was at the Public Theater in New York. It was written by Des McAnuff, who's an illustrious director now, and it starred... Well, I was in it, Mandy Patinkin, Dianne Wiest, Saul Rubinek, and Maury Chaykin. It was an amazing show. But it was definitely ahead of its time, and people didn't quite get it.

I am wearing Santo Loquasto's beautiful costumes. I get to stand on stage at 71 years old wearing the most darling dance boots. I am working with my dresser, who is the best dresser on Broadway; he's traveling with me. It's divine. It doesn't get better than this.

I could see no position to say, 'I'm going to make a living as a writer.' But I went to classes for it; I read every play in 'Theater' magazine. I saw the second acts of everything on Broadway - I had a job as a CBS usher in New York City, and on my way home every night, I'd see what shows I could get into.

I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.

I did The Seagull, the Chekhov play, on Broadway, a couple of years ago, and I had done it in London, and I became completely obsessed with the character, Nina, that I played in that. She's an actress. I couldn't find a play after that, that I wanted to do, because I couldn't think of doing anything else. Every part is a disappointment, once you've done that part.

I've done three Broadway shows; once the curtain goes up, that's it. I mean, you prepare and you rehearse like crazy, but after opening night, the director's not there anymore, you know. He gives you notes during previews after each performance, but opening night, you're on your own.

Broadway is another monster. I've been touring since I was 12 years old and I love being on the road - one day you're here, next day it's snowing, and the next you are in a desert and it's 110 degrees. So I guess I'm kind of used to the madness physically that you go to when you are an entertainer. But it's been great.

I've worked with a lot of gay and lesbian organizations. I sit on the board of the Empire State Pride Agenda. I've also done a lot of work for Broadway Care/Equity Fights AIDS. I think it's important because, when we can be of service to others, it only enhances our lives. I've been helped a lot in my life.

I learned how to get rid of the Southern accent when I was, like, 11 years old and living in New York for the summer doing modeling and commercials and auditioning for Broadway. The mother I lived with for the summer taught me how to drop my Southern accent.

I never expected to have any kind of film career, to be honest. It was all a bit of a surprise. But I was in a big hit play on Broadway. America, as many people will say, says yes more often than we do. And so I was suddenly surrounded by people saying yes. But I was aware that was 'cause of what I was in. It had a big impact.

I think the first Broadway show that I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' and that was in 5th or 6th grade. Our school would take bus trips up to see shows, and so it was on one of their bus trips that I got to see 'Beauty and the Beast.'

I think I can work anywhere, but you don't get the same kind of inspiration everywhere. New York theater has become a big inspiration for me. I only started writing for the stage myself because I like to see the good, mostly off-Broadway plays in New York.

All forms are complex once you get to a really high level, and jazz and hip-hop are so connected. In hip-hop, you sample, while in jazz, you take Broadway tunes and turn them into something different. They're both forms that repurpose other forms of music.

I don't really want to be known as just the puppet girl or just a singing ventriloquist. I want to be known as the performer, singer, ventriloquist, actress, Broadway star, all of it. I want do it all.

A few years after I graduated, I was doing a play in Boston and was asked to audition for Christophe Durang's play, 'Vonya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,' and I got the part. We were performing in Lincoln Center when, during our weekly meeting with producers, they that said they loved our show and wanted to take us to Broadway.

But to me, Broadway has always had more a 'village' feeling than London's West End. The theaters here are clustered together, the staff and many people in the business know each other - it's like a little village all to itself, whereas in London everything is more spread out.

I know about lots of things that have nothing to do with being Asian, that you would never guess from looking at me. I know all about musical theater. I could go on 'Jeopardy!' and knock off the whole Broadway show tunes category. Also the whole Bible stories category.

Like Frankenweenie is a story about a boy and his dog, Big Fish is the story of a father and his son, and all those conversations you can't have. It's universal, in a way that can go from one medium to another medium. That's been the funnest, figuring out what we can do in a Broadway show that's unique and special.

I'm a big Broadway fan and a big MGM fan.

We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.

I'd love to go back to Broadway; I'd love to do animation; I'd love to do hair and make-up campaigns because I love hair and makeup - and, I'd love to do film. I mean, there are a lot of doors I'd love to open up!

I've had the good fortune of working with some amazing people. I mean, my first Broadway show was with Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton. Maureen Stapleton, a legend in the theatre; Elizabeth Taylor, a legend, period.