Performance Evolution Quotes

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.

As a director you want to have actors, not only surpassing themselves, but also going somewhere, going different places.

When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.

I'm most excited to see how I've grown as a performer. After Dancing With the Stars I really was able to evolve in a lot of ways and I'm excited to put that to use on stage.

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger.

I think I've gradually learned to become more of a frontman than I was initially. I mean, when I first started, especially playing with Alter Bridge, you know, I really considered myself more a guitar player who sang.

I love hearing the same songs over and over again - as long as queens challenge themselves to come up with new ways of performing them.

It takes a while to establish a character. Richard Boone once told me he didn't really get the character in 'Have Gun - Will Travel' until the 16th show. You just plant a seed, water it, let the sun shine on it, and hope it blooms.

Songs always get better after you start playing them live.

I guess my interest in performance has evolved and changed many times over the years.

I wrote 'Torches' before experiencing touring as a band. I really had no idea what they would sound like live, and that was something we had to figure out along the way.

What has emerged as I've gotten older is simplifying the characters I play, unless the role calls for something that is arcane or ornate.

I am somebody who is very comfortable on stage because I have been performing since childhood. I have done a lot of public events as well, though there is a huge difference in my performances today and the ones from my childhood, as earlier, I used to sing bhajans.

There's kind of a time you get warned about where the rug gets pulled out from under you: beyond ingenue, before you get into character stuff.

Every actor hopes that the character that they're playing continues to be a challenge throughout their tenure of their show.

A stand-up act is almost like a pool. You know what I mean? It's like a pool, and you're always skimming little leaves out of it, messing with the chlorine level, putting up umbrellas. You're trying to make one little stagnant body of water perfect. Whereas a late-night show is like a river, always moving forward.

I used to watch dailies and felt I had to keep on top of the character, but I don't feel that any more.

We've always had a dark atmosphere to our performances, so it sort of developed along those ways.

Doing Shakespeare once is not fair to the play. I have been in Shakespeare plays when it's not until the last two or three performances when I even understand certain things. In the old days star actors would travel the world doing the same parts over and over again.

To this day, to this very day, except for television, I've never had a writer. Anything I've ever done on the stage, happened on the stage and I developed it from there. It started doing impressions and jokes - which I did very poorly. To this day I can't tell a joke. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I exaggerate it and it becomes a joke. Everything I've ever done I've done out on the stage and it became a performance over many many years.

I think I don't sing as hard as I used to sing. I used to kind of hit the accelerator a lot back in my youth, but now it's just being able to control it, and not work it so hard and use more of an emotional or sub textual kind of approach to singing.

And it's been a process of digging through the songs and trying to make them born on stage again. I think they are very different. I think they come off very differently. I think they come off, I don't know if it's masculine or outward, extroverted than introverted. I didn't know. It's just been a process.

My wife, Katey Sagal, has transformed herself from a sitcom cartoon to a dramatic powerhouse.

There's always the joy of the performance and fine-tuning new interpretations. Over the years, we've all grown as musicians, so obviously there is a lot of subtlety that wasn't there in the first place.

In rehearsals I get so completely wrapped up with the reality that's occurring on stage that by the time the play has opened I'm not usually quite as aware of the distinctions between what I'd intended and the result. There are many ways of getting the same result.