Performance Setting Quotes

It's interesting how some songs really lend themselves to performance in a big public venue and performance by a band and so on, and so they're even more successful in that context than they were on the record.

The theater itself is so archaic and old fashioned, that it doesn't really matter to me whether it's on Avenue D or at the Helen Hayes Theater. What's the difference? It's still a very nostalgic form. Also, it means you're knowingly walking into a room where there's actors. I feel it's very embarrassing. Because, you know, they're right there. You always think like, they can see you, and I think it's mortifying, frankly, and I hate to sit near the front, where you feel they actually might see you. It's too ... it's too live.

If you do street music, do it. So be it. That's not me.

If they're working in a workshop somewhere, where there is, let's say, uh... only twenty people, or something like that, that's still, when they work and do a scene, that's still working in front of somebody.

It was blazing sunshine and I went on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the best gig, really emotional. I've had emails from people saying that they cried. They promised it wasn't the drugs.

I did an open air gig in Regent's Park and that's an incredible venue because the sun sort of sets while you're on stage and you can see the audience so brightly.

I needed to get into a nightclub and stand up and present the material that way. I needed to present it live.

Even though I've been making electronic music since I was 14, it's hard for people to see you as a producer with a musical identity when you're contextualized in a band that performs on a stage.

I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one.

You're very aware in the theater by the response you get, but not so much on television, obviously.

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

There's something about small venues that's amazing for developing material. It's almost like you can not only hear people's response, but you can understand it. In bigger venues you lose that, but you gain this sense of camaraderie in the audience.

I'm not a big raised stage fan.

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

Comedy clubs have brick walls behind the performer. Bricks make you funny. When I'm in front of a fireplace, I'm hilarious.

If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.

What I try to do is give each actor an environment in which they can do their best work.

I really like intimate venues because it feels like everyone in the audience is in on all our inside jokes.

The way a play is seen is completely dependent on the circumstances and the world in which it is received.

No matter where you play, a stadium or an arena, when you're present on stage, it's going to feel like a theater.

I want to create an environment that actors can be really free in.

We did two nights at a place in Southern California that only holds about 500 people. It was really intimate... Everyone was in lingerie... OK, every time someone says a show was intimate, my head always goes there.

I knew 'Be Our Guest' would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything.

Cabaret is a much more up close and personal experience, which I enjoy very much. This is a tremendous difference to being in a large theatre, doing a book show, where there is more separation. But both have equal importance.