Thomas Kail

I want to make 'Broadway' a word that doesn't have pejorative connotation. I don't want 'musical theater' to be a dismissive term. I want it to be something that people can be proud of, that people can say, 'Look at the possibilities.'

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I go to each job and open my little briefcase up, and I take out the things that I have or I know. It might be a Swiss army knife, a quart of milk and a ruler. That might be all I can bring to it, but that's what I have.

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I grew up with two sisters, and we owned three movies: 'Grease,' 'It's a Wonderful Life,' and 'Grease 2.' And you can only watch 'Wonderful Life' in the last half of the year. So I don't remember a time when I didn't know 'Grease.'

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One of the greatest compliments anyone could ever give a director is, 'Everybody was in the same show.' That's something I think about constantly.

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Fundamentally, one of the things I tend to migrate toward when I'm working is a story about people whose stories aren't told in theater.

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My job is the same if I'm making a new musical or making a play for sixty-five people or doing a live television broadcast. The job is to take care of the actor; the job is to create an environment where they can excel and try to access all their attributes.

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The beauty of making theater is that you have to go and do it the next day. Making a show nightly is a really difficult skill. It's something every theater actor and every theater maker is challenged with.

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Fundamentally, what you're trying to do when you're directing is get a group of people who most likely have never met, unify them, and make sure that we're all clear on what we're marching towards.

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So much about being a director is getting the show ready for that first preview audience. I have a lot of experience making events that only happen once; it's opening and closing night in the same three-hour span.

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When 'The Sound of Music' aired live on NBC, 18 million people were talking about theater the next day. That's incredible. 'Grease' felt like a chance for me to participate in that landscape.

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As a kid, I wanted to be a sportscaster. On the radio. I loved the idea of painting a picture. I didn't want to be on TV. I wanted to be Jon Miller, who called all the Orioles games.

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I didn't really start going to see a lot of musicals and live theater probably until I was in seventh or eighth grade, maybe my first year of high school, and by that time I'd probably seen 'Grease' twice a year every year of my life.

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One of the challenges of being a director is often you don't get to work with your peers. You know, writers can write together, and as a director you get to work with so many wonderful actors and writers and designers. But it's pretty rare that you get a chance to partner in that way with another director.

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My pride at being a member of the theater community is deep, and we have a chance to reach a lot of people who might feel like there's a place for them. I want theater to be part of the cultural conversation and be on par with all mediums of television in its ability to be relevant.

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I think that one of the beautiful things about theatre - and a place like 'Powerhouse' - is that who you are is informing your work. There's actually no separation from that.

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Humanity is more important to me than talent... if there's a choice to make, I'll go humanity over talent every time.

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