Brian Stokes Mitchell Quotes

When you're doing a Broadway show, you have no free time.

I did 15 shows a week when I lived in New York. I did five shows on a Friday and seven shows on a Saturday. It was everything I did and it was my sole source of income.

With 'American Idol,' you are on your toes a lot. People don't realize the amount of work.

When you're doing eight shows a week, you don't have much of a personal life.

Unluckily actors don't get much free time, they are demanded every time and everywhere.

If you do eight shows a week it's just too difficult to try to put everything that you can together.

It's physically very, very, very trying to be onstage as a performer, not unlike an athlete, for thirty years.

I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it.

The fact of the matter is, when I'm on tour, I'm juggling so hard to keep all the balls in the air that I don't often get to really enjoy what I'm out there doing.

I am always in much better shape when I am doing a Broadway show because you have the eight shows a week to kind of keep the body clean and perfect in a sense, you know? For instance, I always eat much better when I am in a show because you can't have dairy - for your voice.

Let me tell you something - compared to a TV-drama production schedule, touring is not strenuous.

Nothing feels worse than having to break the stage down before the performance, and I mean nothing.

I wish I didn't have to perform 'Iron Man' every night.

I really prefer the actual experience of being onstage and living the character from beginning to end with the energy of the audience. There's nothing that beats that feeling, and yet I really have trouble with the eight shows a week.

If you now have 20 previews, you will regard 19 of them as super-rehearsals, which is fine, except you are being watched by thousands. I remember suggesting on more than one show over the years, 'Let's not have any previews.' But no one agreed with me. If you could do that, however, it would be a great gimmick - no previews, just opening night.

The show girls do, like, 12 shows a day. I only did one or two shows a day, and I was like, 'I need to go to sleep.'

There was a time I'd do 300 shows a year.

As actors, we exhaust ourselves emotionally and physically, which no one sees.

I was never late to a show more often than 'La Cage.' Because I lived close, and I didn't really do anything in that show.

Thirty minutes onstage for me is literally a full day's work. So I make sure I eat right and I make sure I keep my energy high.

I'm used to being nervous for shows in general.

I stopped getting films. So I had to move to television. I kept myself alive with stage shows.

My schedule usually keeps me busy. However, I love performing on stage and I try my best to take time out for live performances.

The thing is, comparison and pressure have no boundaries. There will be comparison with your co-star, with the films that are releasing with your film.

When it's my show, I know that everybody is there to see me - but I like a challenge, and I like the fact that at festivals not everybody is there to see me, but I have the chance to convert people.