QuoteProject
Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
Stephen Sondheim
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Musicals involve collaboration not just among creators, but also with the audience, whose reactions complete the experience.

Stephen Sondheim emphasizes the essential role of the audience in the creation of musicals. While playwrights and composers collaborate during the production process, the final element that makes the work complete is the audience's engagement and response, suggesting that their involvement is just as important as the creators' contributions.

Themes

MusicalsAudienceCollaborationTheaterArt

In practice

Example use cases

In a theater discussion, this quote can be used to highlight the interactive nature of performance art.

More from Stephen Sondheim

Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.
Stephen SondheimRead
After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
Stephen SondheimRead
Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
Stephen SondheimRead
Let Pirelli's / Miracle Elixir / Activate your roots, sir... Keep it off your boots, sir- / Eats right through. Yes, get Pirelli's! / Use a bottle of it! / Ladies seem to love it... Flies do, too!
Stephen SondheimRead
Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
Stephen SondheimRead
Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last Past what you can see And turn against you... Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell.
Stephen SondheimRead

Similar quotes

People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.
Christopher WalkenRead
I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them
Alfred De MussetRead
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give._x000D_ _x000D_ For we that live to please must please to live.
Samuel JohnsonRead
I'm afraid that the act of writing is so scary and anxiety-filled that I never laugh at all. In fact, when people tell me that such and such a scene or story is comical, I tend to gape. I did not intend comedy - ever, as far as I know. It's probably all a mistake. I am essentially a lugubrious writer. Ha ha!
Cynthia OzickRead
I'm very glad people love 'Breaking Bad,' but the harder character to write is the good character that's as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy.
Vince GilliganRead
The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.
Tim O'BrienRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.