Creativity Quote by Patti LuPone

LuPone’s line has the sly generosity of a veteran performer flattening the old hierarchy between stage and seats. “Misfits” is the key: not a lament, a badge. She’s not romanticizing theater as high art or elite refuge; she’s pitching it as a gathering place for people who don’t quite fit the standard social script. That’s a deeply Broadway idea, born from backstage communities built by outsiders and sustained by audiences who see their own odd angles reflected back at them.

The intent is twofold. First, it’s an invitation: if you feel out of place elsewhere, you’re already part of the theater’s “we.” Second, it’s a reframing of spectatorship. In most cultural spaces, the audience is passive, anonymous. LuPone insists the audience is a kind of cast: another branch of the same tribe that ends up either “on stage or in the audience,” as if those are parallel destinies rather than separate classes. That move quietly deflates celebrity without pretending performance isn’t special. She’s saying the difference is circumstance and courage, not essence.

There’s subtext, too, about why live theater still matters in an era of infinite streaming. Theater is a room where misfits don’t have to edit themselves down to be legible. The communal laugh, the held breath, the applause: social proof that your weirdness is shared. Coming from LuPone, a performer famous for force and precision, the sentiment lands not as soft sentimentality but as hard-earned belonging.