"When I began writing for the musical theatre, I firmly believed that what I chose to put onstage had the potential of changing people’s lives. I wrote from the belief that plays and musicals can foster in their audiences a feeling of shared community, thereby combating personal isolation and fear. In theatrical settings, people become receptive, and important lessons about life can be genially imparted from the stage."

Sheldon Harnick

"For a number of years now, I’ve noticed that people auditioning for my school or my company come in and essentially perform a tribute to me, thinking this is the way into my class and into my heart. They are quickly proven wrong: I want to know what you’ve seen and how you have threaded it through your own experience, your own mind, your own heart, your own history."

Martha Graham

In honor of Mother’s Day, here’s the number “I Want it All” fromBaby, the Broadway musical.

"No 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 Jefferson, critic

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire 

"Compassion may be called the fundamental of all good art because it alone can tell you what other beings feel and experience. Only compassion severs the bonds of your personal limitations, and gives you deep access into the inner life of the character you study, without which you cannot properly prepare it for the stage…"

Michael Chekhov

In light of the recent Les Misérables film release, I offer this 90s-tastic parody from The Animaniacs. 

Jazz pianist and singer Blossom Dearie sings “Rhode Island Is Famous For You” written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. 

Fayard and Harold Nicholas perform their famous brand of acrobatic tap on Hollywood Palace circa 1965. “Old Black Magic” begins around 6:15.

"I am not a courageous person by nature. I have simply discovered that, at certain key moments in this life, you must find courage in yourself, in order to move forward and live. It is like a muscle and it must be exercised, first a little, and then more and more. All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap."

-John Patrick Shanley