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"I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along."
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"What I try to do in a play is put a problem on stage, head-on, without evasion."
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Personal Development

"We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage."
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Personal Development

"We just finished making a record. Everybody wants to play shows, so we're going to after that."
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Personal Development

"I was jumping out of my skin. It was horrible. I was all over the place, because I'd never been in front of a live audience. That's a whole other element in the play, the audience."
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Personal Development

"All I ever wanted to do was play the drums; I felt good about myself when I played the drums. So I worked anywhere and everywhere I could lug my drums in."
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"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
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Personal Development

"I held out a lead figurine of Hades-the little Mythomagic statue Nico had abandoned when he fled camp last winter.Nico hesitated. "I don't play that game anymore. It's for kids.""It's got four thousand attack power," I coaxed."Five thousand," Nico corrected. "But only if your opponent attacks first."I smiled. "Maybe it's okay to still be a kid once in a while."
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"Yeah, I've always been accused of having a sense of mischief and I'm very flattered that you say you can see it in the roles I play, because I think that's important, even if I do play intense characters, like especially Christine Cagney."
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Personal Development

"I play drums, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, french horn, piano."
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"In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues."
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"Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history."
History


"Suffice it to say, I'm not poor."
Poor


"All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other."
Love


"Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience."
Experience


"As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites."
Play


"I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet."
First


"For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else."
Now


"Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one thing in your calendar, that month is gone."
Awards


"I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along."
Play
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