Performance Variations Quotes

I can't give you 150 takes. I can't even give you 30 different ways of doing it! I don't have the talent or the range for it.

If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that.

No one set that I ever do is the same. I mean, if I go to a comedy club, and I perform three sets, all three sets are different because anything can happen in between sets.

It's different playing in a studio than it is playing live, of course.

My schedule is completely different doing a play than it is doing a movie, and I actually think it's a much harder schedule because you've got to do it eight times a week and you've got to do it good eight times a week and with different kinds of audiences who are cold or drunk or tired, whatever it is.

As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.

How do you deal with giving yourself the options in the editing room for dealing with problems that come up from a shifting tone? It's trying to convince your actors to give you the genes and several versions to have more options in the editing room.

What I do when I act and direct is I do a small version, go a little bigger, do a medium one, an over-the-top one, and then even bigger than that. I'll do six readings of the line. And they're not all the same. Just so I know if I was wrong about what I should have done, I luckily have this more subtle version.

You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.

I know from my experience in theater that the crowd is different every night; the reactions, the tension. But it's true for film as well, going from country to country and culture to culture. The difference between California and New York responses, for example. It's really fascinating.

The shows are so different from each other, depending on whether I play with my band, Nine Stories, other musicians, an orchestra, only one or two members of my band.

With film, so much is in the director's hands. Once something is cut together - unless you're in the editing room - you don't really remember what the alternatives are. The exercise in theater is night after night, you are doing the same play, but you have another opportunity to explore.

Edgbaston is a ground where you have to think on your feet because it can vary so much from season to season or session to session.