Aging & Wisdom Quote by Trey Parker

The flex here is pretending not to flex. Parker opens with the anti-taste-maker move: no fixed favorite, no canon, no pedestal. That first shrug is strategic. It positions him as a fan in motion, not a curator with a definitive list, which matters for an artist whose brand is sharp satire and genre-mashing. He’s saying his relationship to musicals is alive, not museum-like.

Then he swerves into devotion: “diehard,” “totally old school.” Those phrases are doing identity work. “Old school” isn’t about being stuck in the past; it’s a claim to legitimacy. Parker’s whole career has been built on taking revered forms and messing with them (South Park, The Book of Mormon). By declaring loyalty to Oklahoma, he signals he knows the rules before he breaks them. It’s preemptive credibility: I’m not mocking Broadway from the outside; I’m inside the temple, quoting scripture.

The specificity of “re-doing Oklahoma in New York” is key. He’s not praising “musicals” in the abstract; he’s talking about revivals, reinterpretations, the way a supposedly settled classic can be re-staged to feel urgent again. That aligns with his own creative method: take familiar structures, update the angles, make them bite.

“I will be the first one there” lands like a punchline, but it’s also a confession. Beneath the irony is genuine hunger for craft, for the machine of theater that keeps rebooting itself and still works.