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.
There are certain sounds that I've found work well in nearly any context. Their function is not so much musical as spatial: they define the edges of the territory of the music.
The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.
Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.
I really believe that if you practice enough you could paint the 'Mona Lisa' with a two-inch brush.
Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.
A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.
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