Musical Theater Quotes

I'm not shutting doors on myself, in any way, within theater, musical theater, TV and film.

People don't realize that I started in musical theater. That's where my roots are.

But you know, I'm not 25 anymore, and I have always said musical theater in particular is a young person's game. It requires energy, mentally and physically, to do it.

I'm trying to bring a new generation into the musical theater and to create a new audience.

I teach musical theater three days a week at the school that my wife and I graduated from.

We thought it would be great to see if you could put pop music back into musical theater.

I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.

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

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.

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

I'm not saying every musical theater actor can do film or television, but a lot of them can. A lot of them are brilliant actors who absolutely don't need to sing to prove their ability and don't get the opportunity.

In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.

At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.

I think of the Roundabout as my musical theater family here in New York City.

My whole background, my whole life was just lots and lots of theater, a lot of that being musical theater.

When I first got to New York, all I did was musicals. After a few years I had to make a conscious choice to close the door on musicals, because I was getting pigeon-holed as a musical theater performer.

I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater.

It's funny... musical theater is what paid my rent and kept me going for the longest time.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

Look, I'm over 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!

Music is my passion, singing, performing. I play piano and musical theater is my background.

I come from musical theater, and a lot of musical theater is about accepting fantasy. I think it is more about just being open and accepting.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

I definitely wasn’t cool in high school. I really wasn’t. I did belong to many of the clubs and was in leadership on yearbook and did the musical theater route, so I had friends in all areas, but I certainly did not know what to wear, did not know how to do my hair, all those things.

I grew up doing musical theater.

If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.

I just always wanted to be an actor. I don't remember ever not wanting to be an actor. I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger, and I really hope to get back there someday.

Thinking back on it, I've been in this business since I was 3, and I grew up in musical theater, so I was raised and surrounded by gay men and gay women. I was hardly around anyone straight.

I would love to work on Broadway, but I don't know that it would manifest itself in musical theater.... I have terrible stage fright that I'd have to get over.

I've auditioned for musicals a lot, but I think my voice didn't really match what they were looking for. I went to school for musical theater for a year and dropped out. Legit musicals are not quite my forte.

Up until I started on YouTube, my first love was musical theater.

That whole world of musical theater was my first love. It's where I wanted to be when I was three years old.

The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.

I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!

In terms of theater itself, no story is too strange or method of telling it too impossible these days. In many ways, musical theater has caught up with straight theater in that it's allowed more surreality and breaking of form, and that's really exciting to me - the challenge is getting people to produce those shows.

I started acting when I was 10, doing musical theater. I was a brunette at that time. I was always cast in all the exotic parts.

Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.

I was really sporty and loved singing. I started off doing musical theater. I left university to go to drama school. So I was a bit of a black sheep.

I was a ballet dancer and that kind of bled into musical theater. I was constantly in rehearsal for one thing or another.

I started out really into musical theater. So you can imagine I was super popular. I wasn't awkward looking at all.

I've always been singing. Since day one. I started doing musical theater and you have to sing in musical theater and so that's where I got most of my training. So singing on stage, you just inevitably, when you're around other vocal artists, you get better at singing.

I'm somebody who grew up listening to a lot of musical theater, so getting to finally write musical theater songs and songs that sound that way - the emphasis being on the storytelling, but the arrangements and the orchestrations can be really varied - I found that to be, actually, a really joyful discovery.

I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

In many ways, I think I'm a good person for it. I mean, I'm not a musical theater dude. Or rather, I don't watch everything, and love everything, and have every album. The ones that I love - like I've seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times. West Side Story I love. I love Singing in the Rain, I love White Christmas. I love the Dennis Potter ones like Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. I love Sondheim.

Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.

I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll.

I'm not into music - the only music I like is musical theater, but I have every Ween album.

I love music, singing, and playing piano (though I'm not very good). And I adore musical theater.

I enjoyed acting growing up; I did musical theater. I had a secret desire to be a television and movie actress, but it wasn't something I admitted to myself that I wanted to do, I guess.

I wanted to be a theater actress, and initially, I wanted to work in musical theater