Russell Howard Quotes

The only TV I would be interested in exploring would be live television. There's no substitute for a team of artists performing at their peak live when failure is possible. It's a high-wire act. That excites me.

A live audience with live reactions feeds a different sort of acting that will then inform your film work, and vice versa.

I've been a live performer longer than I've been a television performer. For me, live is where it's at.

But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn't, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.

The great thing about a sitcom is that you're in front of a live audience, so you really get in touch with what audience reaction is, but also there are lots of elements of film that you're dealing with, and there's kind of a great boot camp or graduate school mentality to it, because you're going to suck.

Stand-up is different from television. In stand-up, you've got to be in control.

We as comics do want an immediate response from the audience. It's really quiet on the set, and there are only the producers, and the director, so a comic is looking for someone to give a reaction, even if it is the camera guy.

I would love to do more TV and do movies for the experience, but my ultimate focus is stand-up. It's the number one thing that I love most because there is nothing like being with a live audience.

Sitcoms are fun. The whole multi-cam genre is always a lot of fun. You throw a live audience in the mix, and it's even better.

Improv is a disposable art form, but it's kind of freeing in that way, too, because things can fail, and the audience is a little more forgiving.

You have to be on your game with a live audience because anything can change.

When it's a live performance, anything can happen.

It is exhilarating and dangerous to perform live. You are walking a tight rope in front of hundreds of people: anything could happen on stage, and whatever does, you must find a way to make it work.

Once you're on, nobody can say, 'Cut it.' You're out there on your own, and there's always that thrill of a real live audience.

In theatre there is a certain discipline that you have to follow, and you have to be experienced to be performing in front of a live audience. It is satisfying to me.

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

I'm one of those wrestlers that leaves everything to the audience and to the fans. I never plan anything, and you will never see Alberto Patron planning in the back what he is going to do in the match.

A magic show and a concert are very similar in the way I like keeping things a mystery and not doing them the same way every time. The listener and the audience never know what's going to happen next.

There's nothing like being in front of a live audience and getting that vibe from them, and I love people to join in the singing, and I love people to clap their hands.

When you play a show or festival, people know what they're getting; they want it. Then you're thrown onto a show where people are watching TV in their houses, and whether they ask for it or not, we're being played in front of them. There's a lot of negative feedback.

When you can connect with a live audience and you get that immediate response it's just great.

Television is very instant. Theatre is much more free, but you are very much on your own up there on stage and in control of your own performance.

There's nothing like performing in front of a live crowd and just having people literally react to whatever it is you do, and there's nothing better than when you get that connection with the audience.

I don't develop anything. I don't practice, I don't rehearse. I just go out there, and it's just amazing and unpredictable and spontaneous every single time. It's the most cultivating incredible performance that you can go and see live for the amount of money that you can see it for.

What I love about improv so much is that we are all discovering it at roughly the same time. The performers are maybe, what, a half second ahead of the audience? There's very little lag time. I think of a thing, I say it, then the audience is laughing and it all happened in a second.