Liev Schreiber Quotes

I think that theater is a unique way to communicate with people as they gather together with other people they may not even know. It creates a sense of shared community for the time of the performance that hopefully carries over into other aspects of the audience's life because they have shared this experience together.

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.

Live interaction with a crowd is a cathartic, spiritual kind of exchange, and it's intensified at a festival.

As a performer, the thing that I love is to see people come together.

The thing I love about theater is the fact that everyone's complicit. We're either there as a storyteller, or we're there as a listener, and it's basically a campfire situation.

I think one of the things that makes theater special is first of all, it's one of the last places you put your phone away. And second of all, it's one of the last places where we all have a common experience together.

I love little theatres because it's very intimate, and you can have a very easy rapport with the audience. Everyone's in the same room.

I think that connection with humans is so important. Sometimes I'll do this monologue and talk to the crowd, like, 'Come on, let's really connect here.' I don't think a lot of people understand it's a two-way exchange. Some people go to a show and are like, 'Yeah, you make me feel.' That's not how it works.

I'm not a huge fan of 3-D, though. Honestly, I think that movies are an immersive experience and an audience experience. There's nothing like seeing a film with 500 people in a theater. And there's something about putting on 3-D glasses that makes it a very singular experience for me. Suddenly I'm not connected to the audience anymore.

It was great fun. We had gone on tour in between the sessions and reconnected with the audience and got a lot of energy back from them, a lot of positive energy.

Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre.

I think everybody's had that feeling of sitting in a theater, in a dark room, with other strangers, watching a very powerful film, and they felt that feeling of transformation.

Something happens to us all when we experience something as a unit that doesn't occur when we're on our couches or holding our little portable DVD players.

Music is a social act.

I went into performing for the community. Being backstage with your company of fellows is the best part of working in live theater. That energy, that combined focus, the synergy - it's addictive.

I prefer theatre to television - you get to feel the love.

I have to feel the audience. I enjoy that feeling of community. There's something sort of spiritual about it in a lot of ways. It's like we're all doing this together.

I just hope that theaters remain. I think there's something very wonderful about getting into a dark room with a bunch of people. There's something cool about that. Brings us all together in one room where we can experience all those emotions.

There is always something wonderful about a live audience.

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.

Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation.

The collective experience of watching a great film together in a room is a transcendent moment that will never die.

I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also, I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness.

I just don't like looking at the crowd and seeing them just staring and listening to the music. When I get them involved, whatever type of music I'm playing, they leave there feeling better.

I love being in a room in front of an audience who cares about the music, who knows the music, and who has lived with the music. It's kind of like an experience you share. I'm on stage performing it, but they're singing the words, too.