Emanuel Ax Quotes

I know two kinds of audiences only - one coughing, and one not coughing.

The Spanish and the American audiences are lunatics. They are very passionate and, like the Irish, they don't have as many inhibitions. If you are playing somewhere like Austria or Sweden, it takes them a little while to come out of themselves.

I once spoke to 9,000 people, but they managed to fit them all into a structure that resembled a Zeppelin hangar, so it was a contained space in which whatever laughter I generated could ricochet and hang around for a bit, encouraging others to join in.

I don't mind either one [crowd that is more willing to interact or crowd that's more ready to just watch]. Both of them are forms of listening to what I'm saying so I can't ask for any more than that.

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

As far as how much you listen to the audience, you listen to them when they really hate something.

I took drugs because we all took drugs.

New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.

Audiences are a wee bit more chatty in New York than in London.

I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.

We like reactions - a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction.

I can tell how I'm doing, and I can tell if the crowd is particularly dead.

I love working with an audience. I love working with actual people who, you know, if they're moved, you see it. If you say something they're stunned by, you see their jaws drop. If they're amused, they laugh - that kind of reinforcement, I totally adore.

The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.

You can feel whether an audience is tightened up and pulled back. Of course the opposite is an audience like we've been having in LA, which is fabulous.

Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience.

I love hearing my audience breathe.

I think that if an audience is truly appreciative of a performance, they will show it. Sometimes though, there are little differences, and there are audiences that are very reserved even though they are enjoying the show.

In our show we know, if we're not getting a response, you see it in our face... we either do something to get a laugh, or the audience is in on it with us.

When you are traveling in vaudeville, you experience so many different kinds of audiences, depending on what time of the week it is, how long the pubs have been open, and things like that.

I feed off the audience a lot, their energy.

I'm obsessed with audiences and obsessed with the journey that an audience goes on.

The crowd really controls how I am onstage. One show, it might be a lot of young people, super-high-energy dancing. I mirror that. Other shows, it's much more calm.

The crowd is the crowd. You're gonna take them as an individual performer how you take them. The key is how do you learn from them. How do you use whatever is happening reaction-wise to get better.

I play some places where the people are right at my feet, and you can see their expressions. It's kind of more like playing in your living room. It's almost easier to play in front of thousands of people in an arena scene, in some ways, but you don't get the personal contact.