Stage
Around 1990, Perry moved to Atlanta, where two years later I Know I've Been Changed was first performed at a community theater, financed by the 22-year-old Perry's $12,000 life savings. The play included Christian themes of forgiveness, dignity, and self-worth, while addressing issues such as child abuse and dysfunctional families. The musical initially received a "less than stellar" reception and was a financial failure. Perry persisted, and over the next six years he rewrote the musical repeatedly, though lackluster reviews continued. In 1998, at age 28, he succeeded in retooling the play and restaging it in Atlanta, first at the House of Blues, then at the Fox Theatre. Perry continued to create new stage productions, touring with them on the so-called "chitlin' circuit" (now also known as the "urban theater circuit") and developing a large, devoted following among African-American audiences. In 2005, Forbes reported that he had sold "more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in videos of his shows and an estimated $20 million in merchandise", and "the 300 live shows he produces each year are attended by an average of 35,000 people a week".
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Famous quotes containing the word stage:
“The spectacle of misery grew in its crushing volume. There seemed to be no end to the houses full of hunted starved children. Children with dysentery, children with scurvy, children at every stage of starvation.... We learned to know that the barometer of starvation was the number of children deserted in any community.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)
“A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)