Stories & Songs

"Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: Be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn’t. But that is not your problem. If you come to my show and you see me afterward, say only this: “I loved it”. It doesn’t matter if that’s what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not “in spite of its flaws”, not “even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it”, but simply, plainly, “I loved it.” If you can’t say that, don’t come backstage, don’t find me in the lobby, don’t lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don’t. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I’ll be ready to hear what you have to say, but at that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you: that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist’s life. I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me “I loved it.” That moment must be respected."

"The song was a ballad in “All That Glitters”, the second of my Williams College shows, and it was called “I Must Be Dreaming”…My father wanted me to listen to the broadcast with him, but I was too nervous and wanted to listen to it alone. The only place where I could be completely by myself was at the Hammersteins’ townhouse, a five-story brownstone off Fifth Avenue. They were away for the weekend, the house was empty and I could listen in total solitude. I went into the living room, turned on the radio and sat under a table. I have no wish to go into the psychological implications of that, but when the program was over, I crawled out, stood up and felt enormously proud."

"You have two kinds of shows on Broadway - revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for ‘The Lion King’ a year in advance, and essentially a family comes as if to a picnic, and they pass on to their children the idea that that’s what the theater is - a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar. We live in a recycled culture."

"All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That’s what makes theatre live. That’s why it persists."