Ensemble Performance Quotes

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.

It is tough, every time. The ensemble is great. I would always ask Andrew, "Is this how Hollywood is? Is this how every TV show and movie is?" And he was like, "No, dude. This is not. Do not get used to this. Be thankful that this is how your first gig is."

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.

It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo.

When you have two people that good in a movie, I think it adds a class and a feeling of importance for other actors that they want to be involved.

I build duets into bigger works. I like to see people working together. What we call a giant solo in my company is about four bars long while twenty other people are doing something dynamically. I like the charge that is set up by a lot of people doing something.

To me, groups of musicians playing together, not fighting each other, but playing a groove together is one of the most exciting things to listen to.

It's more fun to play a good character with a good director and good actors around you. That's what makes it fun, and the more variety, the better.

I did so much theater, where everybody I worked with was so much better than me, that I just sort of learned.

There were radio shows where you actually got to hear people play off of each other and get that immediate magic that goes on. And rather than doing what a lot of shows do, where an individual comes in, reads their part, and you edit it together later on and try to build a performance, we're lucky because this is really very much a theatrical performance that is going on, every single week.

As long as everyone is playing for the scene or the movie, rather than themselves, then you're going to have something really good.

I love playing Jim. I love working with this cast and the opportunity to come back and work with them again was just way too appealing for me. Also, I think this is a great way to wrap up the franchise.

I think jazz is a phenomenal creative force, because it's one man, one vote as you're playing, but it's a collective thing, what you're doing. You're listening to all the musicians around you and you're working within that structure.

Repertory theater is all about being part of the whole, one of the many colors in this vast palette.

I prefer ensemble casts, but with games like 'Resident Evil 6,' where there's just so much dialogue and recording mo-cap, or with 'Resident Evil: Damnation,' where the story pace is already set by a previous set of mo-cap actors, it makes more sense to do it individually.

I consider it an actor going to work with other actors. It's not a competitive sport, it's not to outact anybody else, sorta thing, you can be a bad actor but you don't outact anybody, you just bring your character as best as you can.

Films that rely on their cast to be funny are often episodic and feel like a series of loosely connected sketches rather than a satisfyingly structured script.

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.

My name is on the thing, but the reality of it is, when I get up there on stage, I'm part of a band. I'm part of a unit. It's like a basketball team.

And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.

With a role like Hedda Gabler, which is incredibly complicated, you often feel that you haven't even scratched the surface the first time around, so you relish the opportunity to do it again, particularly with an ensemble of actors and the company we assembled. But when you do that in films you somehow have to make some attempt to uncross people's arms and you have to justify why you're doing it.

Jazz is an interesting music. It's one of the few forms of music where everyone that's performing the music has a creative stake in the music. In jazz, everyone's improvising, and everyone's creating at the same time.

I haven't done a lot of voice work, but I know that a lot of shows will just bring in the actors individually, and they will just do what is on the paper. You miss out on that connection of having everyone there.

One of the things that makes this show unique, in terms of an experience, is that when you do a show that has a large cast, scheduling is a very difficult thing.

The group-effort sound in recording of 'Sea Lion' is like, you really hear all the people in the room and hear them interlocking. There's a real freight-train energy of all these people at the same time playing.