Design and Dialogue with George C. Wolfe: How the Tony Award winning playwright changed Broadway

 

       Broadway Playwright George C. Wolfe      

Growing up in Frankfort, Kentucky Tony Award winning playwright George C. Wolfe was taught to stand up for what is right. With a big personality and flair for drama, he overcame the harsh racism and discrimination of 1950’s middle America. Inspired by the strong will of his grandmother to make a difference in the world, he set out to create his own space on Broadway exploring uncharted territory and empowering those who were often left behind the curtain.

“Broadway is like Means Girls, they gossip about you until you want to kill yourself,” Wolfe quips. “In Hollywood they just kill you.”

The Midwestern bred boy survived the elitist and often fierce personalities found in the theaters of New York City by harnessing his creativity and wit to eventually become one of the most celebrated playwrights of his time. Wolfe broke barriers by introducing stories set to the tunes of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton and the sounds of 1920’s in Harlem Song. His natural ability to capture an audience coupled with an uncanny talent for translating compassion onto the stage can be attributed to the popularity of his work. He says drawn to award stories about one individual becoming empowered and taking on the world. 

“Artists are drawn to materials that are about people transcending. Tony Kushner is always writing about change,” Wolfe says. “My definition of theater space is people in a dark room watching people in the light celebrate how miraculous life is. When theater is good you lean back in your seat, because it’s you.”

Making Broadway accessible 

During his career, Wolfe won a Tony Award for directing Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches in 1993 and Bring Da funk /Bring Da Noise starring Savion Glover in 1996. His earlier career included projects that brought life to African-American stories like Spunk, a collection of stories by Zora Neal Hurston, for which he won an Obie Award and Jelly’s Last Jam, the story of Jelly Roll Morton which won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical. His approach to the stage revolves around inclusion. Wolfe believes everyone should be able to cultivate an  appreciation of the theatre. He carries a responsibility for making art accessible that he says comes from the "challenging things" his parents gave him.

Bring Da Noise/Bring Da Funk

“I love working Broadway, but no one should have to pay $150.00 for a ticket. At different times we would do shows and set aside x number amount of tickets for free. During Noise/Funk we sold tickets for $15, just so people who wouldn’t normally be able to see the theater could come.” Wolfe says. "I grew up in a household where I felt like I was responsible for every single thing every Black person had done since the beginning of time. It makes you feel like you’re part of a collective." 

Wolfe took the values his parents instilled in him to Broadway where he paved the way for other Black playwrights. The difficult position inevitably evolved into giving a voice to those beyond the Black community. As his interest grew so did his desire to include more stories on the stage, eventually it led to him setting aside his work on Broadway to direct film. He directed the HBO movie Lackawanna Blues and Nights in Rodanthe. His journey led him back to Broadway where he continued to direct successful plays including TopDog/Underdog which won a Pulitzer Prize.

“I was supposed to be nice and charming and be in the room and invite others in the room. I was responsible to open doors and windows,” Wolfe says about his career. “I wanted to tell stories and I was interested in crafting theater space where as many people as possible could be in the room.”

It takes courage to tell a truthful story

His work as director of the play The Normal Heart, a now HBO original movie, about the struggle to increase awareness about the AIDS epidemic in the 80's, came out of a need to inform the present youth about the lessons learned in the past. As an openly gay man living in New York City Wolfe experienced firsthand the devastation of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s.

“I am very fortunate to be in a room where I can speak up about where my heart is and where my passion and politics live,” Wolfe explains. “A lot of young people don’t know what happened and this was a way to let them know about how it affected the community. So many people died and at the end of the play we projected all the names of the people who died all over the audience and walls.”

              The National Center for Civil and Human Rights           

Like The Normal Heart, many of Wolfe’s projects have been directly connected to living newspapers, a practice done by unemployed actors who performed the headlines of the daily periodicals. As the Chief Creative Officer of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, he used newspapers to research the events and people who contributed to The Civil Rights Movement. Wolfe was tapped to design the exhibits for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, but as a film director he was hesitant to accept the offer. Once convinced, he realized the vision for the center was in alignment with his values. 

“Tom Bernstein said ‘If you’re going to build a center for Civil Rights don’t get museum people get a good story teller’,” Wolfe recalls. “They were ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Atlanta rose to the occasion in dealing with Civil Rights. This phenomenon of people making a commitment beyond themselves was part of The Civil Rights Movement. It inspired people around the world and very young people are taking a stand."

The intrepid playwright challenged the status quo on Broadway and won, changing the content and ultimately the scenery of theater. Taking on the AIDS epidemic in Angels in America and The Normal Heart, he courageously told stories that gave humanity to millions of faceless statistics. His commitment to universal truths makes his work compelling, resulting in more diversity on and off Broadway - for Wolfe that's the hallmark of success. 

“There’s an audience shift. Denzel Washington on Broadway helped and it’s wonderful because actors and celebrities on Broadway are important,” Wolfe says “I'm fortunate enough to be in room where I can make things happen for other people.”