Michael Che Quotes

You will never, I think, fully conquer the play. Every night, you see this Everest before you. It's that two, three hours and the audience, and you'd better tell the truth.

It's easy to be silly in real life, but making stuff up onstage, that seemed hard. Better to be the funny person off-the-cuff in the room than to risk being unfunny onstage.

When you're doing a show on stage, and they show you a red light, that means you have 5 minutes left. At some clubs, they hold a candle up in the back. That's the worst method. You're up here, and then you see a floating candle. "Oh, no! This place is haunted!" I can't be funny when I'm frightened.

I don't think I'm sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it.

When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. It was his face. It was whether or not he'd approve of my playing.

This accident, or incident, happened in the most secure place I could have felt I was in: Walking onstage with my guitar, you know?

Many, many years ago, I stood on the stage and told bad jokes and did Sophie Tucker as an impersonation, and nobody looked up; and suddenly, I looked down and said, 'Sir, I'm getting fed up with you. Either you watch, or I'm going to suck your neck,' or words to that effect, and suddenly people started to laugh.

Acting can be very solitary, even if you're in a scene with someone else, because you worry about your own performance and if you look good.

Headlining can be sort of solitary - you're sort of on your own out there, and you start to feel for a change.

When I have a bad show, I can't wait until I can get back on stage to forget about it.

With rap, you go in the studio, you make music, you put the music out, then all of a sudden, you're a star: you have a big record on the radio, and you're on stage, and you've never done it before. Let's say your first show is 'Summer Jam,' and you're in front of 60,000 people, and you've never played an arena, ever. You're gonna suck.

I'd say it's harder to play with an acoustic guitar strapped over your shoulder for a few hundred people than it is to play in front of thousands with an entire bombastic band behind you.

There's an audience that is paid to laugh at my jokes. I'm playing a character while I'm doing stand-up. Real stand-ups, man, they're playing themselves. I'd be far too terrified.

Every time an artiste goes on stage, he thinks 'I hope today goes well and I hope I give my best.' That is important - that little bit of nervousness or tension is what makes you perform better.

Not playing off of an audience is very challenging.

Stand up is the most stressful, and hosting and presenting a show has its own stresses, because you've got an audience which you've got to entertain as well as an audience at home.

I'm not a natural comic, I don't think. That's why I gave up stand-up. It was hard. It involved a lot of death. Dying. Dying on stage. But it's one of those jobs you can only learn by doing it.

That's the thing: when I'm on stage, I don't care; there could be ten people there, there could be ten million people there. But if I'm offstage, I'm, like, counting the people. I know exactly where everyone's standing, how far they are from me.

I stand on stage hoping to give good energy to the audience, but if I cannot give good energy anymore, I will have to leave right away.

I feel like it's harder to perform in front of a smaller crowd sometimes still than it is a larger crowd.

Obviously nobody likes it when you walk offstage, including your band.

When I perform live, I'm doing a lot, but I kind of black out. I don't think about it too much.

Some nights I'm funny with the between-song commentary, some nights I'm not. I have no control over this. I pace the stage a lot and struggle with the mic stand in a ridiculous way.