Stephen Sondheim Quotes

It's hard not to be affected by the live audience.

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.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

I just feed off the energy of the audience.

There's nothing like performing for a live audience.

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.

You have to channel the interpretation and performance into 100 people. And with the audience, the critics.

I feel my live shows are my music; everything blossoms from the live shows.

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.

We film in front of a live audience, and I was a theater actor before I got into television, so I like that.

I like doing theaters. I like being up close and personal with the fans. It's really cool.

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

There's something about being in a house with an audience, and having that immediate feedback. I started acting because of that energy; it's what feeds me on stage and informs my choices.

Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is 50 percent of the performance.

Whether you are a writer or an actor or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.

When playing any song in front of an audience, you're watching them experience it, and it changes. In a lot of ways, it's almost like the music is just the background buzz to what's happening between you and the audience in the room.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

I love working with an audience. I love working with actual people who, you know, if they're moved, you see it. If you say something they're stunned by, you see their jaws drop. If they're amused, they laugh - that kind of reinforcement, I totally adore.

The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.

You always hear actors say, 'Theater is my first love,' and it is. It's a time when you really get to do what you do, and there's not a lot of waiting around and interruption and not a lot of money involved - sometimes money really clouds the waters of creativity.

I love playing to people and seeing them react.

What looks absolutely fabulous in rehearsal can fall flat in front of an audience. The audience dictates what you do or don't change.

I love the immediacy of an audience being there and reacting. I'm spoiled, having grown up in theater.

There is no buzz like performing for a live audience.