Don't get me wrong: I love having my own song and being the center of attention, but I also love being part of the group and making the show work in a more anonymous way.
— Alice Ripley
It's nice to be in a smaller room. I like the big arenas as well, but at my core, I'm a live performer, so it's nice to be able to feel the warmth of everybody in the room.
I love every minute of my work.
I would love to play Mary in 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' or 'Virginia Woolf' or a comedy - just, like, a slapstick comedy.
I did grow up in a small town. I grew up in a lot of different places. But I consider my home to be Cleveland.
I was in the original cast of 'Sunset Boulevard.' I played Betty. But I wasn't on the cast album.
If there were a song from 'West Side Story' that I would do, it would be 'Something's Coming,' but in a sense that put it in the right key for me and then do that one.
Norm Lewis, who plays Jake in 'Side Show,' and I had a song together in 'Tommy,' and I understudied Mrs. Walker.
I grew up in Ohio. I was born in a suburb of Oakland, but I grew up in Ohio.
You've got to chop back the performance like a rose bush. That's when it's beautiful.
Teachers want to teach you theory, and that's fine, but when it comes to rock and roll, you only need three chords. There's something comforting about that.
I'm a strong follower of hydrotherapy.
George Hearn taught me that you learn that there are roles that are Tony roles and roles that are not.
I love D.C. I love working there.
All day I wait for my job, which I do at night, and once I get there, I walk a tightrope, jump through hoops, and take breathtaking dives.
Uzo Aduba over at 'Godspell' is doing an even more entertaining Donald Trump than Donald Trump's Donald Trump.
I'm kind of a double middle child.
'American Psycho' reminds me of my track in 'Tommy,' my first Broadway show. It's similar conceptually and has that rock n' roll streak.
Part of the frustration of being bipolar is people don't understand what it feels like.
I was 14. I went to see a production of 'Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,' and when they got to that final song, 'If We Only Have Love,' it was like the top of my head had blown off.
I wasn't a musical-theater kid. We went to plays at school and took field trips to see Shakespeare. And that really sparked that fire for me, and so that's still going, and I haven't given up on it.
Sometimes, you find the play; sometimes, the play finds you.
When the decades pass and you're working in this business, the audiences get older with you. That's the nice part about it. They're so supportive and so loving.
Tom Kitt aside - he's in his own category with me, of course - Stephen Sondheim is one of my all-time favorite composers.
My favorite thing as a performing artist is to get a pile of raw material from a writer who says, 'Will you help me make this real?' There's nothing like starting from scratch.
Leisure time is when I'm not at the Booth Theater.
When I did 'Rocky Horror,' I didn't want to meet the audience afterward, because they'd been having a good time yelling names at me all night, and I didn't really want to tell them that I didn't have such a good time being yelled at all night.
As a teen, 'Thunder Road' was always in my head.
I'm like a prize fighter. When I'm not on stage, every action that I take has to be focused on my next performance.
The road's a tough life, but I said 'yes,' because as a kid growing up in Ohio, I never had a chance to see a Tony-winning actress in a role she won the Tony for.
Oh my God, I love Max von Essen.
Nothing is hanging on my walls.
I'm drawn to raw material and raw emotions.
When everything kind of hit the fan, my dad married Jo Anne, and suddenly there were five kids from the Ripleys and five kids from the Doughertys. Then my dad and Joanne had a baby. I usually have to make a diagram.
I've been committed to personal growth since I was a teenager, and I'm a believer in the idea that your thought is the only thing that matters.
I had to go off by myself to try and discover what my talent really was.
What made me so brave? Maybe it was being the middle kid of 11, and we all had to share one bathroom. New underwear? I never discovered that until I got into college.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor in classics like Shaw and Shakespeare and Chekov and Ibsen.
I've always been drawn to raw material.
I think I enjoy Sondheim so much because of the lyrics. The lyrics, the cornucopia of options.
I don't really talk about 'Next to Normal' that much anymore.
I didn't see any Broadway till I was in my late twenties.
I don't honestly have the time or energy to support anybody else's cause but my own, which is self-expression. So I guess, if I had a cause, it would be education.
It's heartbreaking to see theater people be forced to accept the business side of show business.
'Next to Normal' has challenged me as an actor because of how complex Diana is. And that's got me hungry for another character like that in a non-singing role because it would be interesting to express that same intensity in a different way.
My mother is always the most vulnerable person in any room, and so I definitely have that part of her inside me.
Writing is the place where I can do it all and get away with it. You can't do that in the theatre.
I was always a big fan of 'Pippin' and 'Godspell,' even before I heard 'Meadowlark.'
I have a soft spot for vintage movie houses covered in goo; what can I say?
Now, I come from a long line of narcissists. And I also have no kids - by choice - but I understand not being a mother and the pain that comes from that.
