Popular quotes about Broadway! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Especially on Broadway, composers and lyricists fretted over their creations, obsessed over every rhyme, every critical chord or interval. The stakes were so high. On Broadway, people were watching and judging, especially newspaper critics who knew a thousand ways to slice and dice a songwriter for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of faithful readers. There was no anonymity for the Broadway songwriter. Even the best could find themselves stripped naked the morning after by the tastemakers and their readers.
Michael KosserAll my roots are Broadway. I got my Equity Card doing a Broadway show, and my first love is theater.
Jesse Tyler FergusonBroadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.
Betty BuckleyI'll tell you what I think in general about people who want to make their Broadway debut that are not trained stage actors. Don't they know, Broadway ain't for sissies? It is a tough gig. You are responsible, physically, mentally, emotionally, for eight shows a week, at the top of your game. It's not easy.
Patti LuPoneI'm lucky to have worked in theater all over the world, but there's something magical about Broadway. The audiences are smart, they're educated. They go in ready and they're up for it, they're up for the party. It's a whole different atmosphere.
Hugh JackmanBut as far as dream roles - I know this is so expected of me, but I would to play Elphaba in 'Wicked' on Broadway. I have a lot of dream roles, but that's like my main one because of the vocal track. I love belting high things!
Ariana GrandeA month before graduation I got an off-Broadway job. Then I did some commercials, including one for MCI. You can only see half of me, but it paid well. Thank God for commercials.
Lee PaceThere is a problem on the so-called commercial stage in New York. The price of a ticket is exorbitant, and there are no longer original productions possible, apparently, on the commercial stage. They are all plays that were taken from either England or smaller theaters, off-Broadway theaters, and so on. The one justification there used to be for the commercial theater was that it originated everything we had, and now it originates nothing. But the powers that be seem perfectly content to have it that way. They don't risk anything anymore, and they simply pick off the cream.
Arthur MillerBurlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house.
Karen AbbottToo many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success--had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.
Mae WestImagination bound us stronger than love. Within its limitless borders we launched ships and love affairs, discovered lost worlds, made buildings and babies, found husbands, wrote letters and Broadway plays. We made ourselves up everyday.
Marita GoldenPoetry died as a commercial form and then it died as a serious art form. No one serious touches it. It used to be that somebody like F. Scott Fitzgerald could make a high middle-class income from working as a short story writer for the Saturday Evening Post and other outlets. That doesn't happen anymore. It used to be that a legitimate playwright could make a living on Broadway from writing decent plays.
William MonahanI am a Broadway theatre guy... so it was kind of my goal this year to come out to LA for pilot season and expand my horizons
Jeremy JordanI began modeling in N.Y. and doing commercials. That led to regional theatre and then Broadway and then movies.
Ian ZieringWhen somebody mentions that I did a play with George C. Scott, I'm like, it can't have happened. What was I doing on a Broadway stage at 11 years old? It's so far in the distance now.
Paul DanoI've grown up watching and admiring Norm. Sherie actually starred in the first off-Broadway show I ever saw in New York, which was The Last Five Years. It's amazing how things come full-circle and how the community (once you hang around it long enough) grows smaller and smaller as it grows. Sharing the stage with these people is more than a dream come true it's so special. They're so warm and giving and offer the best advice. Sherie is very nice and maternal and nurturing.
Tituss BurgessI love doing both theater and television. I definitely foresee more Broadway, but I think I would like to keep the singing and the TV separate.
Andrew RannellsI had to get used to the theater atmosphere because I haven't had a role on Broadway since Aida. It was a different process from day one because I was learning my parts by myself.
Heather Headley[VIA DOLOROSA]'s pushing Broadway as far as it can be pushed. I stand before you as a reporter, and you have to decide whether I'm an honest reporter or not. And if you're convinced that I am honest, then I think that you will listen to me in a way that you wouldn't have listened to a fiction where scenes are made. . . . I've thought quite long and hard about what I want to say in this play. And if it means that every single sentiment that I produce is put minutely under an ideological microscope, that's fine.
David HareIt came up after doing St. Jimmy on Broadway for American Idiot. I loved acting, and so I just kept my options open.
Billie Joe ArmstrongI want to be back on Broadway one day. That's a dream of mine. There's nothing like live theater, and I think it's so important for me to be able to be on stage with an audience that responds.
Naturi NaughtonMichael has never cried during a Broadway show. Except in that scene where Tarzan's ape father is brutally murdered. And that was only because he was laughing so hard.
Meg CabotThe only stuff I don't like are Broadway musicals. I hate them. I don't even like to talk about it. I can't bear musicals.
Laurie AndersonI came from somewhat of a musical family. I had an uncle on Broadway. My dad kind of knows how to play instruments. Although, I always find it annoying when he does play an instrument.
Nate RuessThe next time The Oregonian runs a misleading headline saying that it's because of bike lanes that people aren't having their streets paved, I want all of you to march down Broadway and occupy The Oregonian!
Steve NovickI would love to be in musical theater and be on Broadway. If someone were to offer me a position to do something like that, I wouldnt pass it down. Im a huge fan of musicals and I really want to do that.
Michelle BranchAh walk doon Hammersmith Broadway, London seeming strange and alien, after only a three-month absence, as familiar places do when youโve been away. Itโs as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the wey things are in a dream. They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae really see it.
Irvine WelshI got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.
Harvey FiersteinI do an act, and I've been doing an act for 50 years. I do a variety show, which is a musical comedy show. I do comedy, and I do singing, Broadway show tunes and different songs that I like. Been doing it for many, many years.
Debbie ReynoldsI've been reading scripts where they've been doing a lot of singing now, but within the dark, realistic story line. I would love, love, love, love to do that. But not a musical on Broadway, I don't have that kind of energy or stamina.
Alia ShawkatBroadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.
Tony KushnerBroadway is not just the song and the shows; it's the individual performers and the community.
Darren CrissBeing away from home was tough, but the challenge and the thrill of being on Broadway was so fulfilling, and I'm thankful to my husband for making it possible and holding it down at home.
Nicole Ari ParkerNew York. It's home to opera, Broadway, museums, the ballet and orchestra - everything that I love. The most real people in the world live there.
Kristin ChenowethNo one expects a Broadway musical comedy to be in the vanguard of what is bohemian, raunchy, folkloric, academic or aggressively experimental. That is not its job. Its job is to synthesize musical and social traditions with high-styled vivacity, especially those that dwell on different sides of the tracks in real life. The highbrow meets the lowbrow; sweet meets hot; uptown, downtown, all around the town.
Margo JeffersonWhat fuels me is that there are a lot of people coming to Broadway and to the show [Aladdin] for the first time. Lots of kids and lots of adults and it's usually the kids were it's a special moment for them.
Adam JacobsI played Tina Denmark in Ruthless the Musical when I was 9 at the Theatre on Broadway in Denver.
Annaleigh AshfordThey can't hurt me. Sure, they can crush you and kill you. They can lay you out on 42nd and Broadway and put hoses on you and flush you in the sewers and put you on the subway and carry you out to Coney island and bury you on the Ferris wheel. But I refuse to sit here and worry about dying.
Bob DylanThere is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors... and that is their competitive sense.
Elia KazanI'm kind of happy to know there may be some kid or teenager now who might never have had the chance to see my Broadway performance, but gets a taste for what it might have been like now, because they can see Clint Eastwood's film."
John Lloyd YoungI have a very close friend who is a brilliant clown, and I always wanted to do a show with him. So I did one year at La MaMa Theatre. I had not done stilts before that show, and I had about two weeks to learn how to do that, and they were just made with off-off Broadway money. The ones that I had in Rogue One were made by [Industrial Light & Magic]. So they were really easy. They were made with actual prosthetic feet on the bottom. They were athletic, in a way. I could run in them. There was a bounce to them that I could use.
Alan TudykAlthough the 'New York Times' annually declares that Broadway is on its deathbed, news of its demise is greatly exaggerated. There's a lot of life yet in the old tart.
John Lahr