Harold Prince Quotes

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

In theatre, you've got to make the connect with your audience in the first three minutes. If you haven't, you know you've almost lost them.

There's something about that relationship between actor and audience. Whether you get it on Broadway or in a fine local playhouse, there's no greater drug. Every time I get to do TV, film and a play in the same year, it's my dream come true.

I had to drop a boulder to wake people up about the A.R.T. We've done that, and now we have audiences again who want cutting-edge work, who want to be challenged, but who also won't be falling asleep at the theater.

I always say to my Twitter followers to come to the stage door and meet me. What I love about being in the theatre, rather than filming, is that you meet your audience.

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.

All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater.

I generally enjoy talking with the audience - they give you so much. They've usually had a cocktail or two and they are wild, so it creates a fun environment.

'Hamilton' has restored my faith in theater.

I believe in entertaining the audiences with whatever I do.

Stage shows help you meet the audiences face-to-face.

It may take a while, but I think 'On the Town' has the potential for us to break down the boundaries between the traditional theatergoer who may have fond memories of the musical and those with a 'Broadway-is-not-for-me' agenda.

When you have a great audience, you can just keep going and finding new things.

The nice thing about live performance is that I've never, ever been let down. Partly I'm lucky that my audience self-selects itself. Generally they know what they're in for, and generally we all just like each other and get along. But I always find one or two or a dozen really interesting people in the audience who make the show different. And that's one of the things I really like about performing.

The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don't get people to laugh unless they surrender - surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they're with you. And they listen to you if you've got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they're your friends.

Consider the public. Never fear it nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all never, never, never bore the living hell out of it.

I love the theater because the theater is alive. The audience is right there.

The first must that any director has is to not force his public.

I think the New York theater audience is very savvy. Sometimes you get newbies who think they're going to be watching Smash onstage, and sometimes you have people who have been coming to theater for years. It's the combination of those people in an audience that makes for a pretty amazing night - their ability to give each other permission to react and enjoy, in a way that maybe they wouldn't if they weren't sitting next to each other.

When you play a smaller, more intimate venue, you can have real conversations with your audience, take risks, and stay current. You can also change the set list, on how the day feels or how the audience reacts. When you do arena shows, every arena looks and feels the same. You can't see who is in the room.

The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.

My mentor, [Ingmar] Bergman, when we worked on stage, he said you can't convince a thousand people at the big stage where we were working. You can't convince everybody, but just pick one every night that you perform for and make sure that he or she will have an experience that alters their life in a more positive way. So, just one every night. That's worth all the struggle and screaming.

I like to think about what the song is saying, the story of it, and conveying the mood of that to the audience. But at the same time, sharing through interacting with them and engaging them.

There are two kinds of audiences. There's the ones who were in the theaters, and the ones who are outside and we want them to come inside the theater. And, it's not the same.

One half of the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially from his belief in their sympathy with him.