Todd Barry Quotes

When you put the musical in front of an audience, you get to see how the audience reacts.

I get a little teary on stage sometimes. It can be really emotional when it dawns on you that people are singing along and having fun.

The first tour an artist does is a strange one... because you can never tell how the audience is going to react.

You can't control how an audience responds to something. It's up to them.

I am a stress buster. Because I knew what people react or think after watching me on screen and I love it.

I take audience reaction very seriously.

You always hope an audience will respond to something you've done, but there's no way of knowing whether or not they will.

We're paid to care. That's what actors get their money for. But the main goal is not for the actors to be frustrated at the end of the show, but for the audience to be throwing their shoes at the television set. That's what we're trying for.

It's a pain in the ass, show business. And the only time that I really enjoy it is when I'm in front of an audience and they're reacting to me.

Having to stand in front of an audience and have it be your job to make them laugh, you can't really look to anyone but yourself. It's what you wrote, what you said and how you said it, so it's kind of terrifying, but I liked it. When it goes well, it's the best feeling in the world. When it doesn't go well, it's the worst feeling, but once you get into the rhythm of it, I think it's really fun.

It feels really good when you get offstage and feel like the audience gave everything they have.

As a comedian, you're making so many observations, so many measurements. You might catch someone's eyes as you're telling a joke, and they can have this sort of glazed expression on their face, and that can set all your dials off.

I rather like finding out instantly whether you've been successful or not. It's a cliche, really, but the fact is that every gig is different: it's a live event, and you're with a different group of individuals every night.

I've kept evolving the character. At first, you hated Goldust with a passion, then you laughed with him.

The first time I performed on stage, that was almost the first concert I went to, so that was pretty interesting and a bit weird at the same time.

When the audience reacts all together, it's genius. The audience is its own being in a way. It's a weird, amorphous beast that is also somehow a golden emperor that is also somehow every adult you've ever come across in your life who doesn't approve of you - all in one place.

Ok so there's no TV shows, no movies going on fine, but I love going on stage and performing stand up so my situation is a little better than someone who's strictly just an actor or actress.

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.

If you're up there [on stage] thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen.So trying to learn how to overcome those - which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together.

I think that's the graveyard of musicians, playing cabaret. I think I'd rather be dead than work in cabaret. It's just so depressing.

Hosting the Emmys is a challenge for me. I guess it's the equivalent of someone who needs to climb a mountain or jump out of a plane. It's that kind of thing, where this could go terribly wrong. And I love the feeling of when it goes right.

Once I got a job singing and dancing, a reasonable person might think, "Maybe I should learn how to do this." But no, I never did.

Every time I go out on a stage I consider myself very lucky. Because, in a time where people are economically thinking about what to go and see - so, when I am on a stage, and it doesn't matter where I am, that's my favorite show. I come home after and say "That was my favorite show".

It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience.

Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.