The Interval

Quiara Alegría Hudes in her home

in

An Interview with Quiara Alegría Hudes

“I rarely have just one idea. I often have a few things knocking around, and it’s kind of like molecules, and they start bumping into each other and I start to learn a lot from how those bumps happen….In some ways those molecules have been knocking about since I was a teenager, since they’re in me. But when I sat down to actually start writing this thing, I knew I wanted it to be about a group of people who tell stories. That was an early conceit. And they’re going to tell stories that gloss over some of the things they’d rather forget, but the stories are also their way of coping with the things they’d rather forget. ”
~Quiara Alegría Hudes (Full Interview)

Diane Paulus for the Interval

in , ,

“I think my interest in the American musical theatre is in shows that can do all of those things: they move you and they entertain you. And to be entertained, that’s a human need, the idea of diverting oneself to see something, that’s part of what we need as human beings. We also have a need to learn. We also have a human need for spectacle, which to me is defined by seeing something larger than yourself. Why do we go to a mountaintop and look at the horizon or go to an ocean? Because it’s spectacle, and you feel awe in the presence of something larger than yourself. The human need for ritual, that’s also why I love theatre. We move through something as a group. I love to do theatre that tries to drive on a lot of those cylinders. It would be great if it could be entertainment, be spectacle, be ritual, and also make us feel and think and teach us something.”
~Diane Paulus
(Full Interview)

Montego Glover at Lincoln Center

in , ,

“The good news, I feel, is that I have yet to meet a character that I didn’t have something in common with, even if on the surface we appear to have nothing in common. So I look for women—I’ve yet to play a man, but I’m sure it’s on its way—who have a story to tell, who I find interesting and compelling, since that’s the hook into wanting to tell the story. So interesting, compelling, heartfelt stories is really what I’m after.”

Montego Glover
Full Interview

Sierra Boggess in the rain

in

“It was very important to me—and I don’t know why I was this self-aware at the time because I didn’t have the tools—to not be boxed in as a Disney princess. At the same time, I fucking love that I’m a Disney princess. I love Disney. But I didn’t want to do just one thing. I have so many different parts of my own character that I want to explore and different parts of my voice, and I want to do a ton of different things in theatre.”

~Sierre Boggess (Full Interview)

Lynn Nottage in her office

in

“The thing is, I can’t control that built-in bias because it’s going to exist. What I can do is reflect the world through my very unique prism and perhaps people will be able to relate. I can’t control how it’s received, nor do I want to control how it’s perceived. What I want is for people to go into the theatre and in some way their perception is shifted, so that if they do enter with their biases, perhaps they won’t leave with them.”
~Lynn Nottage (Full Interview)