Dennis Christopher Quotes

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.

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

When I was in high school, I was a bad singer. I mean, all my early acting was musical theater, and my first ever show was 'Jesus Christ Superstar.' Everyone's familiar with it. I played priest number 3 and sang so out of tune that it's not even funny.

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

Every night, you fight for that standing ovation at the end of the night. And if you do something wrong, the domino effect is chaotic. And you must not allow yourself to make mistakes whatsoever. So in that case, theater, it's fascinating because of the discipline that you need.

I've always been excited at the idea of performing a solo show.

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

At eight o'clock the curtain goes up and that's it, you're out there with yourself, the audience, the other players. There's no "take two" business. You're on. The great thing is the rehearsals, too. When you're bouncing around on film sets and TV sets you don't really get the opportunity to - generally speaking - rehearse much. With theater you're kind of four-to-five weeks locked down in the room with the guys figuring stuff out. It's back to play school.

My first thought about acting, growing up here in New York, was theater, and I feel like I need to force myself to go get my ass kicked in a rehearsal room and do one of those plays at some point.

We used to approach a small 400-person show like an arena show, as if I was a star and I was coming out on stage in front of screaming people and that I was to be larger than life.

There's nothing better than renting a small, 50-seat theater in L.A. and just getting up there.

There's really nothing like a live audience right there. When you're in a bad show, you can hear the creaks in the chairs.

I liked 'Brighton Beach Memoirs,' which I did with Neil Simon. I kind of was playing him, as Eugene Morris Jerome, and I played that a few times at the very beginning of my career.

My first live performance was the lead in 'Peter Pan.'

Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.

There's variables at every single gig. I look forward to those every night. We have a lot of things that happen in our show, a lot of people from the outside watching the show might think it's one schtick after the next. We promised ourselves we have to be there mentally. We have to be aware. We are forced to be aware.

As an actress who has performed in theater for over 17 years, my experience performing in 'The Color Purple' has been a truly life-changing journey.

Performing in front of an audience gives you an extra ten per cent energy and the chance to react to the instant feedback.

To perform live would be amazing; that's a huge thing to undertake.

Performing live is a part of who I am.

I've always loved acting but never thought I could do theatre because I got the worst stage fright ever.

Live performances are exhilarating, especially when performing for a young crowd.

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

To be honest, I am scared of acting, and moreover, I want to be perfect on the musical stage first.

Performing on Broadway is an honor and a challenge for any artist.