If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Audiences are the same all over the world, and if you entertain them, they'll respond.
I sincerely believe that for the New York theatre to remain relevant, all our major producing institutions should be presenting new American plays.
Musical theater is an American genre. It started really, in America, as a combination of jazz and operetta; most of the great musical theater writers in the golden era are American. I think that to do a musical is a very American thing to me.
One can never anticipate how audiences will respond. One of the lessons that I've learned over the years is to that no matter what my feeling or opinion might be about a given film, once you give it to the audience, they own it.
You're very aware in the theater by the response you get, but not so much on television, obviously.
Is the American theatre allowing itself to become irrelevant? The problem isn't that playwrights aren't being paid enough. It's that theatres all over America are looking towards New York to tell them what new plays to do.
Musical theatre is now a worldwide conversation.
When you put the musical in front of an audience, you get to see how the audience reacts.
If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.
Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.