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.
The crowd really controls how I am onstage. One show, it might be a lot of young people, super-high-energy dancing. I mirror that. Other shows, it's much more calm.
I think it's important for me, for my crew and for the audience to bring something new to each show. I have friends who have done the same act, word for word for word, for 20 years. I have a problem with that. I think the audience should see something new in each show.
Because I started my career in improv, performing with Second City and the Ace Trucking Company, I always enjoy being in situations where - as an actor - you have to think fast & be light on your feet.
If I'm doing a show on Sunday at 7 P.M., that wouldn't be the same show that I'd do at 11 P.M. on a Saturday - it's a different room at a different time of day with different sensibilities. That doesn't mean you have to compromise your art, but it is communication: you have to know how to talk to people.
Today, I am a touring standup comic who cannot stand up. Within three minutes, I begin to wilt, lose my balance, and topple over. I can tap dance and run in heels, but I need to use a wheelchair to navigate airports.
No matter where I go, I never write the setlist until I'm at the venue.
I've learned a lot from being a chameleon, sort of adopting the musical personalities of who I was playing with.
I've gone on in a wheelchair. Another performance I did with no voice - and I had to apologize to the audience and whisper.
I have damaged nerve endings on the right side, so my piano style comes from designing stuff I can play with my right hand. And some of it effectively mimics classical stuff.
I try to read the audience, see what they're in the mood for.
No, we've been performing our old songs a little differently each performance.
Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.
