Theresa Rebeck Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Theresa Rebeck:
The stage gives you more control over your own work; in television, there's a distressing amount of communal writing. Unless it's your show, you have no control over that. You're at the mercy of whoever's running the show.
~Theresa Rebeck
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The movies are all about visual, and television is all about character and dialogue.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Rarely do I try to pull a creature out of life and make it a character.
~Theresa Rebeck
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We need theatre that is contemporary, lively and relevant, and the only way to do that is to take care of our playwrights and produce their plays.
~Theresa Rebeck
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People kept saying, 'You've made it!' and I was like, 'What have I been doing all this time?' I've always felt successful.
~Theresa Rebeck
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One thing I won't do in television is a sitcom. I find that world to be so neurotic and bizarre.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I was born and raised in the Midwest, where people were taught that decency and integrity and community were all important values. We were democrats with a little 'd.'
~Theresa Rebeck
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I make my life with New York stage actors, and I love them. They're the best actors on planet earth.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I write a lot because, if I don't, I start to panic, and I calm down when I write.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Does art have to have high foot traffic to get funded in a recession? A lot of people, I am sure, would say absolutely not. And those postmodern art-loving loners surely would argue that even if one person likes a piece of art, that would make a museum worthwhile.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I do believe that there are monsters out there - and that they are monsters.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Sometimes I feel that my job on earth is to put Julie White through horrible things, watch her writhe and then recover.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I'm an impatient person.
~Theresa Rebeck
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A lot of times, I think people feel that new plays are suspect, and actually, I don't know where that came from. I completely disagree with it!
~Theresa Rebeck
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My son is a musician who next year will be attending the LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in New York City, which his mother helped him get into by making him practice all the time.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have spent my whole life working in the theater, and most of the people I know have done the same. And we are pretty interesting people.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Theater is a public space. It is a spectacular space. It is a gathering place.
~Theresa Rebeck
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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.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Everyone pays lip service to this whole idea of doing more new plays, and nobody ever does it.
~Theresa Rebeck
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It's so funny, I'm always stealing from Moliere, and nobody ever notices. I steal from him willy-nilly.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I go to museums. I buy art, even. You should see my house; we don't have any wall space left.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have two sensational kids who I have raised with my husband, hoping and working every day to help them become healthy, happy, and decent human beings.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I'm actually interested in poor behavior. I'm interested in what drives people to poor behavior.
~Theresa Rebeck
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You have to respect who the character is. It has its own internal truth, and you can't betray that. And if you don't betray that, it will not betray you.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Show business is a struggle. I certainly wish that I had just blasted on the scene and not had quite such a hard time. But there's a great sense of the relief in that you don't have to prove yourself anymore.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I think new plays are vastly more surprising and challenging and inspiring; I hear from audiences all the time that they are delighted when they see plays about the world we live in now, at this moment.
~Theresa Rebeck
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The myth that theater isn't for everybody is total nonsense. In the 18th and 19th centuries, everybody in America used to go to the theater all the time. The shows they went to see were big, crazy melodramas that had careening storylines and houses burning down and pretty girls in danger and comedy and death and destruction.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Watching people toss all caution to the wind, who are ready to put their lives on the line for a dream, is something that is accessible.
~Theresa Rebeck
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When I was a staff writer on 'NYPD Blue,' it was truly my job to hear David Milch's voice for that show and to deliver episodes that embodied that voice.
~Theresa Rebeck
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That stupid postmodern emphasis on image over content has slammed us right into a dramaturgy that willfully leaves the audience behind and then resents the fact that they don't 'get it.'
~Theresa Rebeck
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I think it's straight men who are oblivious to goodness or badness to dates. That's probably unfair. Maybe they just don't complain as much.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have admiration for people who can do it well - the guys who wrote 'Cheers' and 'Frasier.' They created sort of a blissful comedic universe.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I had such a good experience doing 'The Understudy' with the Roundabout, and people were really enthusiastic about the work.
~Theresa Rebeck
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It's one of the central problems of American culture: telling you if you're younger, more beautiful, more famous, whatever, that then you'll be happy.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I sincerely believe that for the New York theatre to remain relevant, all our major producing institutions should be presenting new American plays.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Obviously, a theatrical masterpiece needs more than a plot; many television shows are nothing but plot, and it is doubtful that they will stand the test of time. But I also don't think that making fun of plot or acting like we're all somehow 'above' structure is such a good idea.
~Theresa Rebeck
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It's sort of a mystery where ideas come from.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Art is great. At its best, it engages the intellect and challenges the spirit; it connects us across history and reminds us of our humanity.
~Theresa Rebeck
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In America, the average playwright makes less than a receptionist in a non-profit theatre. We don't have decent health insurance - or any health insurance at all.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Spielberg read the 'Understudy' and decided that was the voice he wanted to write 'Smash.' He wanted a story that had humanity and humor and high-stakes dreams.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I like to write. Prolific is part of who I am.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Honestly, the thing that I have found to be most useful over a long career, or maintaining a long career, is taking back the power at some point and self-producing.
~Theresa Rebeck
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When people tell me I'm a prolific writer, it's a nice thing to say. But I think to myself, 'Yeah, but I don't do anything else.'
~Theresa Rebeck
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I think we have a cultural difficulty with looking at our problems.
~Theresa Rebeck
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In television, what you are doing is trying to fit your voice into a particular mold.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have always worked consistently, even in small ways and even in smaller theaters where I'll do One Acts or something.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Theater can be elusive and poetic, but it doesn't thrive when it doesn't reach an audience.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have huge admiration for Jesus Christ and for his incredible compassion for all people.
~Theresa Rebeck
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New York was the Promised Land growing up. Writers were gods! The great gods of American culture... I thought.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Our distorted media culture sees men as subjects and women as objects; in films, Woody Allen gets older and older and still dates 20-year-old babes; movies about women are called 'chick flicks,' and men make fun of them.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I actually think we should be trying to be rigorous in our thinking about television and the way it enters our lives and shapes the way so many people think.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I'm not afraid of just cranking it out and seeing what comes out of my subconscious. Because I don't always know what I'm feeling. I do a lot of rewriting later. But that first blast feels like a spigot - like it's coming from somewhere else.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have tremendous affection for New York and my life, but I'm a satirist at heart. And it's easy to satirize New York.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I actuall have to defend realism in theatre because I think TV does it badly - so corrupted by layers of bureaucrats who want to leave examination or psychology.
~Theresa Rebeck
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We have this powerful ideological basis to the country that I don't think any other country in the world quite can brag about. It's a very complicated nation, and it's very fertile.
~Theresa Rebeck
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In the theater, there's an emphasis on the singular voice. You know, it's your play. And in television, there's so much institutional involvement. So you end up having to negotiate with a lot of people, and that provides a kind of wear and tear on the spirit.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Some of my family goes back a long way in Denver.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I would rather work in the theater than anywhere else, and it does seem to be a place where stories can and should be told purely.
~Theresa Rebeck
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When I go to Ohio to visit relatives on holidays, I am often astonished by the level of casual dismissal offered up by way of discussion.
~Theresa Rebeck
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We were told that hard work and talent and character would get you somewhere. At school, we learned it was important to share. On Arbor Day, we all planted trees.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Generally, what I try to do is always have a money gig and an art gig.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I think that because television is shot on a really fast schedule, and it gets piped into your home on a smaller screen, it's much more about character and dialogue in a lot of cases than the movies are.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I often find it maddening to live in America, in a way that is both amusing and horrifying to me. America clings to versions of itself that are absolutely hypocritical. I can't shake my outrage at it, so I write about it.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Why is being a female having an agenda any more than being a misogynist - which David Mamet most certainly is?
~Theresa Rebeck
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There are times when I wonder how I ever thought that I could dramatize the death of a national discussion as a family comedy.
~Theresa Rebeck
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It's not my responsibility to write plays about the way the world should be.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I am curious about a lot of things. I'm perplexed and engaged.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Part of the problem with producing contemporary political theater in America today is that many theaters don't have flexibility or resources, be it hiring a lot of actors or staging a work that might be tough for some audience and board members.
~Theresa Rebeck
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There's a thing that happens to Midwesterners - we spend a lot of time talking about having a different set of rules about manners. I don't know about ethics, but certainly about manners, what you would say and what you wouldn't say. And that is not very East coast.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Because I'm an American woman, and I write straight plays, it's always been sort of assumed I would never be done on Broadway. But that was never the goal.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I think, with most writers, their neurosis is finishing things. I have a different neurosis. I'm terribly anxious when it's not finished. Then I become really difficult to live with.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Heath Ledger's recent death, like that of River Phoenix, was handled with great care by the press. Anna Nicole Smith's not so much.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Why is it so hard for men to identify with women as fellow travelers on this good Earth?
~Theresa Rebeck
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I have a dog whose name is Banquo.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I work hard. I like getting to the end of things. And I write my plays that way.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Some people think big audiences are crass and that, say, a comedy that appeals to a wide audience is pandering. Other people would argue that you could say that about Moliere.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I seem to be constantly confronted by theater professionals who are more or less annoyed by the prospect of structure.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Nothing sounds as crazy as telling people you're not crazy.
~Theresa Rebeck
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The ridiculous way that workplace politics are conducted completely gets in the way of excellence in America.
~Theresa Rebeck
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The audience just doesn't care. They are just as interested in women-centric stories as they are in stories about men.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I think it goes without saying that young would-be playwrights in developmental workshops should be so lucky as to write plays as good as 'Waiting for Godot,' 'Uncle Vanya' or 'King Lear,' none of which would have existed without a decent plot.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Not so long ago, my feminist education taught me to ask the question, 'Is the gaze male?' The answer, apparently, is yes, which is why so many movies and television shows are about men and not women.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I find a lot of input from other people very stressful.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Denver's commitment to giving contemporary storytellers the stage is crucial to the American theater. That's something embraced by 'Smash.' We should be telling our own stories.
~Theresa Rebeck
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The economics of theater are painful. I still think that the theater community should be looking much more rigorously at how to let the playwright keep the money they make.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I like working with television. I do.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I see how the Midwest distrusts the East Coast. The Midwest sees itself as morally superior. The Coast sees itself as intellectually superior. And the two are actually the same thing.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I remember when I was at Brandeis, Geoffrey Wolff, he was a great fiction-writing teacher. He was the writer-in-residence, and for those of us who wanted to be writers, you were so excited to be in the same hallway as him.
~Theresa Rebeck
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There are so many people from many different classes and ways of life who converge in one space to make a musical.
~Theresa Rebeck
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Why on earth is the 'New Yorker' publishing puff pieces about pretty girls who go to parties? Does the 'New Yorker' ever run photos of cute boys just because they're cute and they come from money and they go to lots of parties?
~Theresa Rebeck
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Moliere and Arthur Miller affected me at a very young age. In adulthood, I became overwhelmed by Chekhov. Those are my big theatrical influences.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I'm not ashamed of being American; I'm very proud.
~Theresa Rebeck
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I let action rise out of character, really.
~Theresa Rebeck
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So in case there was any doubt, I am here to report that having a play on Broadway does not suck.
~Theresa Rebeck
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