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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of rhythm in storytelling and performance.
George C. Wolfe highlights that every play should have a deliberate rhythm that guides the audience's emotional journey. By controlling the pacing and flow of the narrative, a creator can effectively lead the audience through moments of tension and release, creating a compelling experience that resonates deeply.
In practice
In a theater workshop, a director might quote this to emphasize the importance of pacing in their actors' performances.
One of the things I learned very early on was that if you cast the show correctly, and if you've created the right energy in the room, the solution is also in the room. The solution doesn't necessarily come from someone, but if everybody is working in a very steadfast and rigorous way, then everything you're looking for is in the room.
A musical is what happens when text collides with motion collides with song collides with spectacle. And spectacle can be the human heart; it doesn't necessarily have to be a helicopter crashing.
The wonderful thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. The worst thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. That dynamic is thrilling and challenging every time you make a show.
I was raised to believe that other people's suffering was my responsibility.
I think I am the first person of color to direct a major white play on Broadway. In 1993? That's astounding to me. And horrifying to me.
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.
I suppose one of the challenges of writing the word-side of music these days is trying to decipher and communicate how this planet is very overwhelming at this point. The difficulties we face are overwhelming. It's very difficult to give yourself the time to breathe and appreciate the joy and beauty that might be just right around us.
We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.
A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people.
When you are real in your music, people know it and they feel your authenticity.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.
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