Howard Rheingold Quotes

Theatrically seeing a movie with a group of people and having a collective experience has an authenticity that you can't get with your big screen television.

When people in stadiums do the Wave, it's the group-mind collective organism spontaneously organizing itself to express an emotion, pass time, and reflect the joy of seeing the rhythms of many as one, a visual rhyming or music in which everyone senses where the motion is going.

When I do a concert and people put their hands in the air, they're doing it on their own.

Strangers used to gather together at the cinema and sit together in the dark, like Ancient Greeks participating in the mysteries, dreaming the same dream in unison.

Music is a social act.

In the theatre, because you're all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn't exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players.

Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.

If there were no rules about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always.

I love the intimacy of venues like the House of Blues. When everyone is packed in and so close to you, it makes you play differently. It's so much more fun to play because there's so much more high energy in a place like that.

You can't force something like that. But we have encouraged our audience, because we avoid the confrontation of regular rock concerts: us up here, you down there. Instead, we're looking for interaction.

When I go to my live shows it's often a multigenerational audience, a family bonding experience.

A Kiss concert experience is like sex or anything else that's done with more that one person. It's the give and take that makes it so great. When the audience takes it to the next level, we can kick it up another notch.

It is such a social thing, laughing. Two thousand people in a room laughing is such a great buzz and they tend to laugh much more in a group.

The thing I love about theater is the fact that everyone's complicit. We're either there as a storyteller, or we're there as a listener, and it's basically a campfire situation.

I appreciate the intimacy of a 300-to-500-person venue; it's the sweet spot for me.

I play some places where the people are right at my feet, and you can see their expressions. It's kind of more like playing in your living room. It's almost easier to play in front of thousands of people in an arena scene, in some ways, but you don't get the personal contact.

The truth is, when you want a great show, it's not 'entertaining' the audience - it's you sharing with them... an experience of communion.

Music and dance have also always been a communal activity, something that everyone participated in. The thought of a musical concert in which a class of professionals performed for a quiet audience was virtually unknown throughout our species' history.

When the lights go down, that's 30,000 peoples lives colliding. Everyone there working is working for that moment, everyone watching is watching for that moment. It's when you're all in agreement about what you're all doing so it's a wonderful feeling of togetherness and possibility.

Everybody tends to merge his identity with other people at the speed of light. It's called being mass man.

I think the New York theater audience is very savvy. Sometimes you get newbies who think they're going to be watching Smash onstage, and sometimes you have people who have been coming to theater for years. It's the combination of those people in an audience that makes for a pretty amazing night - their ability to give each other permission to react and enjoy, in a way that maybe they wouldn't if they weren't sitting next to each other.

When you have a cast and crew of people who make it light hearted and crack jokes, and break treats, and understand that we are all in this together. That's a biggest plus that you can have.

You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.

It doesn't necessarily matter if I'm onstage or not. I just find the communal experience of a rock concert, or any type of music performance, achieves a kind of transcendence that I associate with spirituality. It's the closest thing to what I think people expect church to be like. Or maybe just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself.

I think escape is sort of like coming to a show with ten thousand other people and responding to that moment. Sharing that moment - that's escape.