Matthew Bourne Quotes

A performance is only as good as the audience you are playing to. A lot of times you feed off of the audience, and we always try to give them all we've got and sometimes you don't get a lot back, but we've never been dead whenever we've performed.

It was really great to also see the response that people were having to 'Treme' 'cause you're in a vacuum when you're on a TV show. You see the response online, you read about it and all of that, but actually to be live and have that many thousands of fans come out, it's really wonderful.

I remember once doing a gig in Ireland, and there was a woman jumping around and screaming, 'I don't know what this is but I love it!' I thought that was a nice compliment.

When you're onstage, you're acutely aware of the reaction of a particular group of people, because it's like a wave.

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.

Some nights you walk off stage and go 'That was a good crowd.'

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

The feeling you get from playing to a good audience is hard to describe without sounding as though you are talking silly. But reaction is important. You might feel in yourself that you're doing it ok but it's when you get the live reaction that you know you're doing it right.

When you're onstage you have a certain faith that somebody's gonna yell somethin' back. Some nights it's louder than other nights and some nights they do, and on some songs they don't. But that's the idea. I think when you begin to expect a reaction from an audience, it's a mistake.

Through years and years of playing to various audiences, what I've learned is - and I think quite a few actors will agree with me - we're not always the best judge of that audience's reactions or not. And we discover, to our amazement, at the end of the show, they bring the house down with applause, and we thought, 'No way tonight,' you know.

The only real satisfaction is live performances. That's when you can actually get some feedback from what you're doing. You get that artist-to-audience chemistry. I love it!

I'm not the first one to say it, but that time onstage is a heightened sense of present tense.

I feel the best part of my job is meeting my fans at my shows and seeing their faces when I'm singing to them on stage.

I feed off the audience a lot, their energy.

You can feel how the audiences react. For us, it's about the performance and the reaction. We feed off the energy. And no matter how enthusiastic they are, we can tell if we're playing well or not.

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

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

It just gives us that adrenaline charge when we go on. We know we're gonna come off two hours later, but we're pushing it all the way; we build it right through. It's amazing how it happens. It's sort of magical, because you couldn't do it in a rehearsal like that; you need that audience in front, and that's really what gets us going.

Performing live is a part of who I am.

I hate a sleepy, nonresponsive, and silent audience because it fails to excite me as a performer.

Korean audiences are amazing, they really love the music.

We were playing shows still when we wrote 'Phoebe' and 'Rock All Night.' We got to test those songs in a live setting, so it was nice recording them and knowing which ones really resonated with the crowd.

There is nothing like hearing people sing your single back to you during a show.

I love every aspect of live performance and putting our shows together and approaching it from the standpoint of, 'What would we want to see if we were a fan sitting in the audience?'