Theatre Directors

"The people demand of you that you be equal to these great historical times, that you sacrifice all other considerations, that you offer your utmost abilities, that you act at this time as men who are independent, who have no personal ties and obligations, men of supreme moral and national consciousness."

"Qui celebriamo l'idea di comunità e famiglia artistica… che riunisce diverse generazioni che si incontrano… A Spoleto Ellen ha stabilito, fin da subito, un rapporto immediato con il territorio."

"In Spoleto Ellen established an immediate relationship with the territory and here we celebrate the idea of community and artistic family that brings together several generations."

"Believe it or not, it’s easier for me nowadays to be outside this country than in this country, because when I go outside I’m in hotels with elevators and services of all kinds, and it’s not such a hardship."

"Eighty percent of what is now considered the American theater originated at La MaMa."

"Our mission was and is to develop, nurture, support, produce and present new and original performance work by artists of all nations and cultures."

"We're going to do it, baby! We're going to do it, darling!' And within a week later we were doing it."

"If a script ‘beeps’ to me, I do it...Audiences may hate these plays, but I believe in them. The only way I can explain my ‘beeps’ is that I’m no intellectual, but my instincts tell me automatically when a playwright has something."

"Her vision dreams of a world where a multiplicity of perspectives is essential and where art is a means to bring people together. I am grateful to be a part of this artistic community that she nurtured, and this season again I am energized by its tenacity, passion, bravery, and transformative work."

"I can’t imagine La MaMa without her. There may be a place called La MaMa that somebody brings good avant-garde international theater to, but it will not be La MaMa. La MaMa is her."

"Die Moderne ist nur in unserem Wunsche und sie ist draußen überall, außer uns. Sie ist nicht in unserem Geiste. Sondern das ist die Qual und die Krankheit des Jahrhunderts, die fieberische und schnaubende, daß das Leben dem Geiste entronnen ist. Das Leben hat sich gewandelt, bis in den letzten Grund, und wandelt sich immer noch aufs neue, alle Tage, rastlos und unstät. Aber der Geist blieb alt und starr und regte sich nicht und bewegte sich nicht und nun leidet er hilflos, weil er einsam ist und verlassen vom Leben."

"Es geht eine wilde Pein durch diese Zeit und der Schmerz ist nicht mehr erträglich. Der Schrei nach dem Heiland ist gemein und Gekreuzigte sind überall. Ist es das große Sterben, das über die Welt gekommen?"

"The reality of life is becoming more and more complicated to understand and more difficult to cope with. So there is a tendency to regress to the infantile stage in which you look for someone to take responsibility for you. Infantilism is manifested in all sorts of ways, such as the tendency to wrap oneself in a diaper to me, putting on a tallit [prayer shawl] is to wrap oneself in a diaper. For example, stickers that declare, ‘We have no one to rely on but our father in heaven’ and the like. Those slogans have become a national mantra signaling a danger of extinction. The moment a whole nation absolves itself of responsibility to look after itself and believes that there is a higher force that will do it, it can be taken over by all kinds of deviants and crazies."

"I was shocked to read about the barbaric practice of stoning women to death. I was surprised by its widespread use and by the huge number of women who were stoned to death since the Islamist revolution in Iran and recently in some other countries. But what surprised and shocked me almost to the same extent was the indifference shown by civilized nations and by the liberal democratic western states to this crime against humanity. Regimes that practice this crime of utmost savagery as part of their judicial system should be treated as criminal regimes and should be excluded from the United Nations."

"Theatre is almost the last place in the world of culture where living people meet living people."

"I like to diversify, so for me writing an article for a magazine is as exciting as writing a play. And I think if you open yourself up to it, lots of opportunities come forward that are not the opportunities that were going to be yours."

"Growing up in the Pico/Union barrio of downtown Los Angeles in the 1970's was to be born into abject poverty and violence. And even that fed into telling stories and finding ways of surviving. I can see now that I was always a playwright, I just didn't know or have the language for it then."

"I am often inspired by actors and I fall in love with them, so I write towards their strengths and gifts. Sometimes, it is merely about logic and making sense of the poetry in my head and how it translates that can be hard to articulate…"

"I call myself a citizen artist, because one of the things I do is try to get my playwrights — especially my graduate playwrights — interested in the world. It’s about how you connect art to culture and community here and now, and how we are vital to the expression of our community..."

"Being a playwright —especially in this current climate— is a privilege; I believe that as artists we have a responsibility to share narratives that we often don’t hear about or expect. When you subvert the status quo and reveal the truth in universality, you can spark change…"

"I think there are elements of the playwright in every play they write – it’s hard to completely disassociate from your characters and their given circumstances when you are the person creating it all…"

"The burqa has different meanings for many women who wear it. I think as Americans we have a tendency to only associate this garment with violence, oppression, and fear without really knowing much about its history or cultural significance. It is my hope that audience members will approach this play with an open mind and an open heart to allow for an alternate perspective that is both positive and meaningful."

"I know it’s a good play if I’m afraid to show it to my grandmother."

"The play is my gut's response to stories that have to do with my own bloodline. I think it is a great luxury and adventure to be able to dive into one's own history, one's own lineage, psychology and story, and illumine and at the same time fictionalize it."

"I don’t think anyone understands the Asian Americans’ place amidst this white and black culture. There’s something very specific to being Asian American that other peoples aren’t getting, and we haven’t learned how to define it, even amongst ourselves. We’re the Other. We’re always the Other, we can be here forever and we’re still foreign. We’ve impacted the culture, but third, fourth, fifth, sixth generations and still, you walk down the street and someone will look at you, and you will be foreign. That is what disturbs me."

"To me the play is never just the play but it’s the whole journey to it."

"To me, it’s always been a matter of: Do your homework and be committed to the extent that you can capture that world. I think I’m open."

"We thought that would be fun to honor the people that do the mundane daily chores, the people that are part of the work service backbone of places like Los Angeles and Orange County…So much effort is made to vilify [these people]."

"Luis Valdez said it long ago: The beauty and the frustration of theater is it is one permanent long shot…You never get up close in someone’s eyes. And that kind of blew me away (while shooting) a close-up. That was all new storytelling for me, and I had to figure it out on a very fast learning curve."

"I mean, I’m middle class. I’m upwardly mobile. I’m not a communist; I’m not a socialist. But when I visit the prisons, when I see the new homelessness in L.A., when I see a declining middle class and the growing Occupy movement in a rich-get-richer America, I find that the remnants of colonialism are alive and well. In the barrios, on the reservations, and certainly in parts of the Sonoran desert on the American side…"

"To have been chosen when you're in your thirties to play someone who's 120, and then to find when you were in your early fifties you were going to play the same character at your then-age, that is, in your early fifties, in fact I don't think I've come out of the trauma. But the interesting think about that it's an absolutely unique challenge for an actor; I can't think of anyone who's been asked to do that, or indeed been given the opportunity, and I'll always be grateful for that."

"There's a moment in one scene of the new film where tears almost appear in his eye. These are crocodile tears, but for all those in the movie, and perhaps watching the movie itself, they'll see he is apparently moved -- and of course, he is. He can just do it. He can, as it were, turn it on. And I suppose for him, it's also a bit of a turn-on -- the pure exercise of power is what he's all about. That's the only thing he's interested in and the only thing that can satisfy him -- which makes him completely fascinating to play, because it is an evil soul."

"Gnawing upon our resentment, we stretch out in an iron cage, Watching the slow passage of days and months. How we despise the insolent crowd outside, Standing there foolishy, with tiny eyes bulging, As they mock the stately spirit of the deep jungle. Here by misfortune, shamefully caged, We are no more than a novel sight to amuse them, some plaything... O stately soul, heroic land, Vast domain where yesteryear we freely roamed, We see you no more. But do you know that during our days of frustration We follow a great dream, letting our souls race to be near you, O formidable jungle of ours!"

"The muse lends me a lyre of myriad tunes, her brush of myriad tints—I want to play a wizard working wonders, magic tricks with all the sounds and colors of the earth."

"I knew Ferdowsi in his respect of women and family and never saw that he reduces the value of family in his precious masterpiece."

"Women are present as well as men in Shahnameh, the masterpiece of Ferdowsi."

"The promise of survival beyond individual death or dispersion appeals to the most primal driving force of existence. Promises of transcendence have evolved out of the thriving desire to ward off the inevitable threat of individual death. Most systems propose a more or less perfect immortality – one where memories, hopes, desires, knowledge and even experiences survive the death of the physical body. An engagement and acceptance of this meme makes death particularly irrelevant. The upholding of the promise at the cost of individual sacrifice becomes acceptable. Individual sacrifices even become necessary in validating the promise."

"Seekers of meaning may not find meaning, but they do find each other. (From 'Eulogy for a Friend')"

"Simulation systems (mathematical models, philosophical thought experiments) that don’t have real world applications are like SPACs - shells with all the paperwork in place till something operational is ready to merge into them."

"What if we were as concerned with what we put into our minds as we are becoming with what we put into our bodies? What if there was inalienable evidence that culture is as important as food - would we scorn at junk culture?"

"We now remain, at least on paper, one of the last few countries in the world, where if you don’t die successfully, you’ll go to jail for attempting."

"One singular aspiration in all my work is to attain the state of awe. And what is awe? Awe is when you come across something that is infinitely complex and inexplicable by all your memory and thought systems — and yet comprehensible in a singular gasp of experience. It is an incredibly important emotion for me - the inexplicable is an invitation to engage with the cosmic void that humanity has been in a constant dialogue with for 250,000 years. And for the longest time, the void hasn’t answered back. In the last century, we have steadily found relevant answers, exponentially accumulating and organising into a more holistic meaning. A century ago the narrative was (and it still is, in many places) that if we probe too much into our universe and selves, we would lose out on our capacity of wonder, but exactly the reverse that has happened. When we’ve looked into the molecule we found the atom and when we looked into the atom we found the electron and when we’ve looked at the electron we have experienced sheer awe at its quantum probabilistic nature. So each time the scope of awe has expanded— expanding with it, our foresight, worldview and free will — for me, a film has to grasp that, and translate that experience."

"Ship of Theseus writer and director Anand Gandhi is one of those remarkable people who seem to know nearly everything and yet doesn’t boast about it or try to make you feel small."

"My new fav person to discuss tech, ethics, and the future - filmmaker Anand Gandhi."

"The ability and the desire to transmit knowhow, intention, and insight to others around us have co-evolved with humanity itself. Mixed reality is a huge milestone in that human project of record keeping, perspective sharing, empathising, and merging with the ‘other’, a project that began with the first cave painting, or even earlier."

"As a child, I wanted to become a scientist, a magician, a poet, an architect, an illustrator, a sculptor, an actor, a philosopher, a photographer, a playwright and an animator. So by the time I was 13 or 14, I was convinced that it would be possible to a be of all of these if I made films."

"We are closer to understanding ourselves and our environment than we were two centuries or two thousand years ago, so we are definitely more equipped with knowledge and information than the Buddha was, or even Darwin was. Darwin didn’t know about DNA, we know about DNA. Just imagine if we could go back in time and inform Darwin about DNA or inform Buddha about it. What they were dealing with was intuition, with a logical breakdown of what they had observed. We have scientific tools for those things. We are using the energies of the past to create something new and I’m very confident that what I’ve done has never been done before. I feel no pressure about it, I’m just taking the next step."

"In a deeply interconnected world, there is no 'other'."

"For a long time, the movie [Shrek] didn’t know what it wanted to be. One problem was unavoidable: Chris Farley had died, and the story had been geared around him, so when he went, the story kind of went with him. It went through an upheaval while they tried to find the right tone for it. I think they were really close to shelving the project when a few of us came into story to try and find a tone that we could work with. When Kelly Asbury moved on to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron I became head of story, along with Randy Cartwright. Along with Andrew Adamson, who stayed on as director, we started pulling little pieces together out of what remained, and part of the way through, Jeffrey [Katzenberg] decided that I should be directing. A few months later, we started production."

"Here we are, sitting in tuxedos and evening gowns, wearing borrowed jewels, and everyone's watching Shrek take a poot in the water."