Harold Prince Quotes
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I didn't go into the theater to be a producer, I went into the theater to be a director.
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I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.
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There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.
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I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.
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I wouldn't want to be just pigeonholed as an extravagant director.
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I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.
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I don't look back. I look forward and plan new shows. That's really feeding the most important part of working in the theater.
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We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.
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Despite the successes, you remember the failures - rather lovingly.
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I love big, bold, truthful theater - the tradition of Victorian theater.
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I would like to see more new productions of new material by new composers/lyricists/book writers. I would like to see people take more chances. I think because everything costs so much they're not taking the chances they used to.
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I really don't spend time thinking about the past. I think about the future. I'm not stopping.
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It's nice to stay up nights worrying about the material, and not about the investors who gave you $10 million to do your musical.
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A star may guarantee business, but the tradeoff is a very short run.
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Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don’t think that’s a good trend for the theater at all.
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The idea that I have to be on the same side of the fence as Dan Quayle is cruelly depressing to me, but the truth is, I believe in family values.
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I was there when the quote-unquote golden age of musical theater was flourishing. I met everybody who worked in theater or was famous in theater from the '40s on.
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I like to do everything you can possibly do before you go into rehearsal, because once we are in rehearsal or on the stage there will be a problem I didn’t anticipate. It’s really good to think we got it all nailed - of course you’ve never got it all nailed.
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It's a terrible shame if you're born the brightest guy in your class. If you're not, then you have to hustle-and that's good.
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Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.
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Artistic self-indulgence is the mark of an amateur. The temptation to make scenes, to appear late, to call in sick, not to meet deadlines, not to be organized, is at heart a sign of your own insecurity and at worst the sign of an amateur.
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I'm a pragmatic man. I'll veer on the dangerous side, because I love dangerous subjects, but I won't shoot a show in the foot.
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I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.
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I saw 'On The Town' about nine times. I discovered it. I loved it. I was in college.
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I don't think there's a defined contemporary American musical, do you?
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You think, 'Musicals, they must always be romantic' - You'd be surprised how few of them historically have ever been romantic.
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I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.
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I always had a good time in theatre, even when shows don't turn out as well as I'd like.
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The idea is to work and to experiment. Some things will be creatively successful, some things will succeed at the box office, and some things will only - which is the biggest only - teach you things that see the future. And they're probably as valuable as any of your successes.
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The musical has always been in jeopardy - until - or was in jeopardy until it was realised that it is probably the safest living theatre art form.
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