Harold Prince Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

Audiences are quite happy to be astonished, and they don't care who does that astonishing.

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.

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.

Criticism is valuable... and self-congratulatory experiences are not.

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.

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

Most of the big money people don't know what would interest an audience if you did it. They only know what interested the audience last time.

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

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

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

You think, 'Musicals, they must always be romantic' - You'd be surprised how few of them historically have ever been romantic.

Despite the successes, you remember the failures - rather lovingly.

I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.

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

I really don't spend time thinking about the past. I think about the future. I'm not stopping.

Producers want to put their music behind revivals but I don’t think that’s a good trend for the theater at all.

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.

The truth is, for some absurd reason, no one is willing to admit that the interests of the producers and the theater owners are not the same.

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

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

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.

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

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

I remember when people actually wore coats and ties to theatre every night. They don't anymore. It's very different.

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

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

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

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

I love big, bold, truthful theater - the tradition of Victorian theater.

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

There was never any question that I would go to college, that I would travel, that I would go to the theater early and often.

Nobody has yet proven that taking a chance and doing something unique that an audience isn't used to is a bad idea. What the theater lacks is that kind of courage.