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The truth is that I don't like rehearsals. I get embarrassed hearing my own work. I assume that the cast is embarrassed to sing the stuff.

Stephen Sondheim

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Stephen Sondheim
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: March 22
Author
Composer
Dramaturge
Librettist
Lyricist
Musician
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
New York City
New York
Stephen Joshua Sondheim
Stuff
Rehearsal
Truth
Embarrassed
Work
Assume
Like
Cast
Casts
Assuming
Hearing
Sing
Rehearsals

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It should be interesting to see two entirely different ways to treat a story, geared for two entirely different kinds of audience.
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You move just a finger, say the slightest word, something's bound to linger-be heard.
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I don't like the word 'career'. When somebody says to me, 'oh, you've had such a wonderful career', I think, 'career - that's after you're dead.' I just don't think that way.
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Take a play that you like but you think is flawed, and see if you can improve it and turn it into a musical. [...] Then make up your own story.
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I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.
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After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
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The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.
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If I cannot fly, let me sing.
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The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.
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On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
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Pointillism takes emotional images, character, etc., and makes them all come together and make a whole that tells a story.
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Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father. I liked my father a lot, he was a swell fellow, but I didn’t see him very often because my mother was bitter about him and did everything she could to prevent me from seeing him.
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Art is craft, not inspiration.
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For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.
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Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure.
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I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.
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Let Pirelli's / Miracle Elixir / Activate your roots, sir... Keep it off your boots, sir- / Eats right through. Yes, get Pirelli's! / Use a bottle of it! / Ladies seem to love it... Flies do, too!
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The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.
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Let the moment go. . . . Don't forget it for a moment, though. Just remembering you've had an and when you're back to or makes the or mean more than it did before. . . . Now I understand! And it's time to leave the woods.
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All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.
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