Demetri Martin Quotes

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

A live performance is the same no matter what genre it is. Wrestling, rock 'n roll, hosting, acting - it's the same thing.

The crowd is the crowd. You're gonna take them as an individual performer how you take them. The key is how do you learn from them. How do you use whatever is happening reaction-wise to get better.

I'm always making micro-adjustments onstage, listening to the audience, and what a crowd is like can be infectious.

When I play live, I feel how the audience is going and follow and lead at the same time.

The audience plays a huge part in how a piece will actually form. They really allow the performers to walk a tightrope in a way that never seems to happen in the privacy of your own four walls. I'm listening to the audience, and they're listening to me.

An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater.

'Eastbound & Down' is giving you a rhythm. It's just a whole different vibe with improv. As an actor I just kind of exercise within my environment and adjust depending on where I'm at.

Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

There's a joy in having the molecule of an idea, then testing it in front of audiences at secret shows that people only know about the night before.

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it, direct it, produce it, the audience votes, and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying.

My live performance, it just comes from feeling an energy and emotion from the crowd.

It's an awesome thing to be flung out onto the stage twice a weekend in front of 250 people, and you have to make it up as you go along.

There's nothing like the buzz of live theater. You put it out there and receive an instant reaction: laughing, crying, yelling, applauding.

I like to learn the lines and not get any precontrived things in my head about the part. Just get on stage and see what the other actors are doing, and respond to them as honestly as I can.

At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they're thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting.

I come from the theater, where the response to your work is immediate, and I suppose there's a part of me that still craves that.

I did a live late-night talk show called 'Creation Nation' with friends of mine. I had a sidekick and a band, and I wrote the whole thing. And it had the form of a late-night talk show, but we did it on stage because no one was giving me a TV show at the time.

If you're not doing something right, you can feel it on stage, and if it isn't going well, the audience will tell you. A teacher can teach you sense memory and this and that, but until you get in front of an audience, you don't really feel it.

'Even Flow' is the best to play live because of the long solos. It starts out slow and builds, and, depending on what the audience does, I can reflect that in the solo.

For me, there's nothing more valuable as an actor, or better way to learn, than getting to perform in front of a live audience, no matter where you are. Whether it's on Broadway, in Florida, or doing a tour.

I added and deleted according to the audiences' response to different gestures, and chose songs to build an act that would constantly stimulate my audience.

I definitely love performing live because there are moments of spontaneity. And as much as you're performing on stage, I feel like the audience is performing, too.

Compared to film or television, theater is more interactive, collaborative.