Creativity Quote by Patti LuPone

LuPone’s blunt little double-tap dismantles the romantic myth of “the grind” in performance. She’s not talking about the normal tiredness of doing eight shows a week; she’s drawing a hard line between honest labor and compensatory labor. A great show can wipe you out and still feel clean, even exhilarating. A bad one drains you because everyone is patching holes in real time: pushing tempo to create “energy,” mugging for laughs that won’t land, selling stakes the script hasn’t earned. That’s the overtime she means, the hidden shift where craft turns into damage control.

The phrasing is key: “when it stinks” is deliberately unglamorous, a backstage verdict that refuses euphemism. Then she repeats “exhausting” to underline that the problem isn’t stamina, it’s futility. The show becomes an engine with misfiring cylinders, and the cast is asked to supply the missing horsepower with their bodies.

Coming from a Broadway lifer known for precision and high standards, the subtext is a professional ethic: performers shouldn’t be praised for heroically surviving bad material, and audiences shouldn’t confuse sweat with quality. It’s also a quiet rebuke to producers and creative teams who treat actors as the final fix for structural problems. LuPone is defending the idea that the best theater isn’t built on emergency effort; it’s built on work that holds, so the performer’s energy can read as intention, not desperation.