At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater.

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots.

I had this epiphany that I like the interaction with people. I wanted to make things happen at a grassroots level.

When you're a freelance director, you are hired to create the art, and it kind of stops there.

As a director, I never feel that I have the answers.

For me, the reason why people go to a mountaintop or go to the edge of the ocean is to look at something larger than themselves. That feeling of awe, of going to a cathedral, it's all about feeling lost in something bigger than oneself. To me, that's the definition of spectacle.

I had to drop a boulder to wake people up about the A.R.T. We've done that, and now we have audiences again who want cutting-edge work, who want to be challenged, but who also won't be falling asleep at the theater.