I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

Jason Robert Brown

Categorized in : You Feel Time Voice

It's about one moment. It's about hitting the wall and having to make a choice, or take a stand, or turn around and go back.

Jason Robert Brown

hitting wall choices

What I always wanted to do was to be a rock star.

Jason Robert Brown

rock star always rock-star

What's great about collaborating is getting to work with wonderful people. That's what theatre is about: other people getting you to give your best, and getting everyone else's best out of them.

Jason Robert Brown

best you work people

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

Jason Robert Brown

alone you music light

When I started out, I wanted to be Billy Joel. The plan was to be a singer-songwriter of that ilk, and, then, I got waylaid - that's probably an unfair way to say it - from being a rock star by the musical theatre stuff, which I love doing.

Jason Robert Brown

doing theatre love way

I never wanted to write 'Mamma Mia!' or 'The Book of Mormon' - they're not my thing, I don't care about them. What I do is very different.

Jason Robert Brown

dont-care never care book

Leonard Bernstein was probably the most significant formative influence on me - he was such an encompassing musician. I spent my teenage years absorbing him, and my other interests stemmed off of that. Bernstein led me to Sondheim and to Gershwin, and Sondheim led me to listening to Joni Mitchell.

Jason Robert Brown

me influence listening years

You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?

Jason Robert Brown

control you vision artist

As much as I can act, I don't have anything in me that yearns to be an actor - that sense of needing to be onstage, in costume, in character; that is utterly not interesting to me.

Jason Robert Brown

me i-can character interesting

I think that when you write for stars, I think that you have to be very specific about what they do beautifully and let them bring it to life.

Jason Robert Brown

think you stars life

I am a muso, and I love doing it. I assumed that would be my career for a long time. I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't think that anyone could actually be that full-time, so I always go back to conducting and arranging and playing. If you scratch me, I'm a musician.

Jason Robert Brown

i-am me time love

My work is very popular with performers, and there are theatre people who get what I'm doing and what tradition I'm working in. I'm very grateful to them - they're my people, who understand why I work the way I do.

Jason Robert Brown

tradition grateful work people

Personally, I've never been popular, so I'm not surprised that professionally I'm a bit out of step, too.

Jason Robert Brown

surprised out step never

What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.

Jason Robert Brown

try i-can trying way

It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.

Jason Robert Brown

i-am myself me you

I love my stuff - you're not supposed to say that. But because I'm performer as well as a writer, I'm constantly interacting with my own work. I always get to find these little secrets that I left for myself, little notes - I find them all over the scores.

Jason Robert Brown

myself you work love

I write about outsiders. I write about people who are outside and don't know quite how to get in because it's how I've always felt.

Jason Robert Brown

how know always people

I find I like the spotlight for a very brief period of time... and I sort of need it. But then, the minute that it's done, I have to sort of go hide. So I was never really meant, I think, to be a performer for a living.

Jason Robert Brown

hide never think time

Comedy is drama. I think that if your characters are feeling something that is very real, then they have to respond in a way that feels real to them, and some situations, the only response you could possibly have is to respond in a way that's so extreme that people are going to laugh.

Jason Robert Brown

laugh feeling you people

I did musicals in high school, certainly. And then I just kept wanting to do them. I felt at home in the theater, in that way that, you know, you're supposed to if that's the kind of person you are.

Jason Robert Brown

you home way school