7 Stages
Quotes
7 Stages is the conscience of Atlanta theatre: a clear and persistent reminder that anything less than our truest work is unacceptable. BRENDA BYNUM, Actress
7 Stages has helped make Little 5 Points an incredibly rich and diverse community. People from all over town come to see plays here, and the theatre has been an anchor for our image as a cultural center. ALAN MATHEWSON, Little 5 Points Business Association
Diversity and unpredictability are the hallmarks of the 7 Stages repertoire—productions that are literate, culturally diverse, unfancy, and thought-provoking.
DAN HULBERT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The best theatre provokes thought while providing entertainment and 7 Stages has always tried to challenge its audiences as well as entertain them. Carmen Kittel, by German playwright Georg Seidel, does both.”
-Charlene Bell
Southern Voice
“As full of mysteries and silences as the Sphinx, and yet somehow set in the future of man’s reckoning, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot still has the power to confound and compel. All the fearful mystique and baggage-of-speculation surrounding this 1953 classic (is Godot God? etc.) are swept away in the fascinating, entertaining 7 Stages production by off-Broadway legend Joseph Chaikin.”
-Dan Hulbert
The Atlanta Journal/ Constitution
“I think that 7 Stages sets the standard to which all arts organizations in Atlanta aspire. It is truly remarkable that 7 Stages has such a diverse and appreciative audience.”
-Michael Lomax
Fulton County Comissioner
“7 Stages is one of ten companies nationally which is dedicated to examining and producing innovative theatrical work. As a part of this select group, 7 Stages provides Atlanta, and Little Five Points, with an anchor for the art community.”
JACK SHULTZ
AT&T
“7 Stages is a vital part of the city’s theatre life, and its intimate space, unusual for Atlanta, will provide the Cultural Olympiad with a fantastic venue.”
-Jeffrey Babcock
Director
Cultural Olympiad
“They ought to pass out life jackets to the audience at 7 Stages before each performance of Athol Fugard’s My Children! My Africa! A personal flotation device might keep you from drowning in emotion as the play’s current draws you inexorably onto a sea of passion, far from the safe comforting shores of your everyday rationalizations. It’s a risky voyage into the unknown, but those who make it will be richly rewarded.”
-Jude Mahoney
Highpoint
“7 Stages is the rare crossroads where black and white, young and old, intellectuals and working people are steadily well-represented at plays that celebrate their common humanity.”
-Dan Hulbert, Theatre Critic
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
December 6, 1992
“What I love about 7 Stages is its total commitment to artists and the community. It’s a place where artists have an open door to create new projects, or work on old projects, or work with other artists. 7 Stages helps us all realize that supporting artists is a major part of creating a civilized society.”
KENNY LEON
Broadway Director
“When Del and Faye invited me to be playwright-in-residence in 1986, I had no idea I was making a lifetime commitment or that so much good fruit would be borne by the relationship. The theater has been my artistic home for nearly half my life and I have attended nine or ten opening nights of my own work over the years. My association with these important artists has been the cornerstone of my life, leading me to contacts that eventually brought about the publication of my fiction in the United States and abroad. I have been a lucky writer to find such friends and, indeed soul mates in art. This third 7 Stages production of Mr. Universe fills me with pride both that the theater is still vital and doing such extraordinary work, and that I am still a part of it.”
-Jim Grimsley, 2009
“I like walking across the street from my house on a Thursday night, buying a reasonable ticket for a wonderful seat in an intimate theatre for a Sam Shepard play, and watching the man who cooks my burgers at the local tavern by day become a seamy and thoroughly convincing gangster for the night.
I like seeing my friends and neighbors create mythic realities that run concurrently with the enterprise of my bookstore, the daily pulse of traffic in the street, the conversations in the café where we all eat breakfast. A community theater reminds me that the Familiar transforms constantly into New, and that sometimes that transformation can be intentional.”
-Kay Hagen
Co-founder of Charis Bookstore 1983
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1943
“7 Stages’ loyal audience is turning out every night to escape the chaos going on downtown and to find an alternative to the jingoism and commercialism of the official venues. ‘I find resonance in the fact that people at Seven Stages managed to find the money and means to get us here,’ Lee DeLong says. ‘I find resonance in the fact that Sarajevo is an Olympic city that was destroyed. I also find resonance in the question ‘Are the Olympic Games really to bring people together?’ Are they really? Here in this theater, the answer is yes.”
-Patti Hartigan
Boston Globe
