Hasan Minhaj Quotes

With a play, for me, there's no time to sit back on it. You're living on your instincts. And every night there are subtle changes and adjustments, because what's in front of you is a living, breathing audience.

I'm a performer. I push the envelope, I work in a very uncontrolled manner onstage. I do a lot of free association, it's spontaneous, I go into character.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

A lot of my best stuff is just ad libs on stage, and that's one thing that I've gotten back to at the live show.

I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone. There's an amazing interaction with the audience that happens because they are very much another scene partner.

Believe it or not, I write on stage. I can't write anywhere else; I have to be in a moment. I also have to challenge myself to make something funny out of a premise. I never have my own jokes written. I have to change things as I go along, and I have to entertain myself.

You get a sense of how the show works and then let your personality take over.

I never try and do the same show, ever. The audience controls the dynamic of the shows. Sometimes they listen, and sometimes they ask a million questions.

A lot of guys come out, and they do the exact same thing, are in the exact same mood, and have the exact same entrance every night, I really just make up a lot of crap as I go along.

Every single performance of 'Fleabag,' I would learn so much from the audience reaction or how you could change it all the time, and I loved that sense that the performance is ever-growing and changing and could be affected by the audience.

I always have my setlist planned out, but the best moments are when the energy of the crowd just gets your mind working and you are able to come up with new tags for jokes and just riff off things in the room.

When I'm on stage, my interaction with the audience is something that really makes me come alive. It's a feeling like no other. The energy of the crowd fuels something new inside.

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.

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

I've always really liked theater. It fascinated me. You can create a reality and get people involved in that reality. It takes place in real time.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.

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

As for doing more dramatic work over comedy, I do whatever turns me on at the moment.

There's something interesting about playing live; you're in the moment, and I think it would be beneficial.

I don't do the same show on any two nights.

I enjoy all kinds of performances and take each role differently. I keep the audiences in mind.

I gravitated toward stand-up because there's no overhead. I mean, literally, there's no overhead: Often, you're outdoors performing in front of groups of people.

I think any actor would agree that you can't replace theater. It's immediate. You have the energy of the crowd and every single night it's different.

I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.