Harold Prince Quotes

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.

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.

I didn't go into the theater to be a producer, I went into the theater to be a director.

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.

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.

When I started producing, it was George Abbott directing and he would let me do the scenery. He just wanted to know where the doors were - the entrances, the exits; the tables, the props - and then I would hire the designer. I took charge of the visuals - scenery and costumes and so on. And, the shows looked wonderful.

A star may guarantee business, but the tradeoff is a very short run.

One thing is certain: We can't go back. The musical will never be the same as it was.

Producing should be a creative responsibility.

You do a show to be a hit and hopefully run a couple of years.

All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.

I always had a good time in theatre, even when shows don't turn out as well as I'd like.

I don't know why the guys with the big money don't find five terrific young producers and give each of them enough to commission a musical and to live on for a year. You'd be likely to get at least one project with a future.

When I was a 25-year-old kid, I raised $260,000 for my first show, 'The Pajama Game,' in such a homemade, pathetic, endearing way - a buck here, a buck there.

I don't think there's a defined contemporary American musical, do you?

There's no lack of talent out there. I suspect there is a lack of creative guidance, and that would not be solely the responsibility of a director but also a producer.

I wouldn't want to be just pigeonholed as an extravagant director.

I really like reaching out and seeing the audience - they're potential audiences! And on occasion I can make them excited about going to the theater again, if they've ceased or gone less.

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.

I always liked the visuals to be choice and at the same time minimalist. And, I love black boxes. After all, that's what theatre is, it's an empty space, and it's both limited and unlimited because the space is the space, but what you can do with people's imaginations is really endless.

I suppose a certain degree of adulthood has entered my life. Aiming for Broadway, I can't think that way any more. Of course, Broadway will always be important. But it's not the focus of everything that you do. You know, I'm very happy I was born when I was, so I got there in time. When it was time to get there.

I really wish people - maybe it's naive - wish people had priorities and were willing to be artistic patrons.

I have a terrible memory because I'm not interested in the past. It's done, it's done.

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.

I've always loved Victorian melodrama. And I've always liked larger-than-life theater, providing it's truthful and honest. I like what the theater can provide in energy and bombast - I enjoy it when it's large, and by that I don't mean in size, I mean in emotions. Shakespeare did that.

I'm just really trying to say what I really mean, which is: 'Your eye's on the prize, your eye's on the future. It's nice to know that a lot of wonderful things have happened to your life and that so much of it has been successful. That's great, but the work is really what makes it fun - and that has to be the future.'

The truth of the matter is that I have lasted a long time, and with it comes both good and bad things. One of the good things is that no one can ever take my career away from me. No one can ever say, 'You can't be in the theater any more.'

We've got to find a way to protect the process of making musical theater.

Nothing is staged exactly as it was, because I can't remember - and I consider that an advantage.

I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

Throwing money at something doesn't really create - forgive me that onerous word - art.

'Evita' was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It's the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I'd ever seen before myself.

I'm always glad to see somebody rethink something rather than reproduce something I did.

I wouldn't be here if it weren't for 'Show Boat.' The kind of theater I chose to be involved in is completely a direct reflection of what 'Show Boat' made possible.

I've seen a lot of 'Show Boats,' but I've never seen the one that thoroughly satisfies me.

The perfect expression of receiving a lifetime award is to be working when they're handing it out.

I don't like abrasion while I'm working. I don't thrive on chaos. I enjoy what I'm doing, and it seems to work better when I am enjoying it.

I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present.

I got successful awfully quick, and I wanted it ... But I do think there is responsibility to move the musical theater form forward. I think you always have to be aware of the work that came before and build on that.

You can't just keep recycling revivals. And you can't keep betting on the efforts of guys like me who've been around. You have to take the next step and bet on the next generation.

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.

What's missing in the musical theater is producers willing to nurture new work, raise the money and put it on.

I saw 'On The Town' about nine times. I discovered it. I loved it. I was in college.

Audiences are very willing to be taken somewhere, and to ask an audience beforehand what it wants is probably, I think, a mistake. Much better you should tell them what you want and hope they agree with it.

I feel so much more comfortable when I'm working on material which makes other people scratch their heads and ask, 'You're going to make a musical out of that?'

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.

There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.

Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy.

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.