Diane Paulus

I think in our culture there's been a tendency for people to blame the audience. There is a tendency in our industry to say, 'The audience has left the building. People don't want culture anymore.' ”

In Elizabethan England or classical Athens... theater was at the center of, not culture, but society and politics and religion and civic engagement. Those things have a different audience. ”

When you're a freelance director, you are hired to create the art, and it kind of stops there. ”

You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get... It's about experience and building community and catalyzing dialogue and bringing people together. ”

At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater. ”

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots. ”

Music is rhythm, and all theater is rhythm. It's about tempo and change and pulse, whether you're doing a verse play by Shakespeare or a musical. ”

I've gotten to the point that I don't even know what tomorrow brings. When I'm teaching, obviously I'm in town for the class every week. ”

I think actually what keeps the intensity manageable - it's a little counterintuitive - is that it's changing all the time. Every week is different for me. ”

We're a depraved civilization. All this technology, all the computer games and the iPhones... nobody will sit for art anymore. What a dismaying state of humanity. ”