Quotes & Sayings About Performing For An Audience

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor. — Anupam Kher

I like my audience. I always feel when up on stage performing that I could enjoy having a cup of coffee with any one of them. — Lyle Lovett

I love performing in front of an audience and seeing smiles on the kids' faces. — Shannon Miller

When you are performing in theater, you feel so connected to your audience. It's exhilarating! — Laura Marano

Yes, yes, theater in general is just going to always be my first love, performing for a live audience. — Megan Hilty

Starting in music, where I get a chance to connect with the lyrics of a song, I learned so much about performing on stage and connecting to your audience and to what you're singing about. Singing is very emotional. Every song has its own purpose. — Naturi Naughton

Acting is not as difficult as you may think. People are born natural actors
and play many parts on the stage of life. Everyone is constantly in front of an
audience - or performing monologues when alone. — Bryan Michael Stoller

My mother asks when I will do some theatre, and there is something about getting your 15 minute call. That is what you become an actor for - performing in front of people and getting the love from the audience. — Jonas Armstrong

I definitely enjoy an audience, when I'm performing. As I get older I'm kind of less comfortable at being demonstrative. I always fancied myself as a raconteur, but that never really worked out. — Chris O'Dowd

I have no experience performing that music live in front of an audience. So that remains to be seen. I'm very excited to see what that's going to be like. — Tom Wopat

No matter how many times people say it - 'Oh, I'm just writing this for myself' 'Oh, I'm just doing this for myself' - nobody's doing it for themselves! You're doing it for an audience. So whether I'm performing or writing a book or playing music, it's definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely. — Steve Martin

Performing in front of a live audience can be pretty intimidating, so having a full head of hair was important to me. — Joey Fatone

I have a lot of experience in the studio, performing onstage, talking to an audience. I learned most of that stuff when I was performing with my mom. — Skylar Grey

Most of my career has been about standing on a stage performing music to an audience, and once the show is over, they go home and I go on to the next show. — Greg Lake

When you're doing those operation scenes, you not only have to be on top of the dialogue and the rhythm of the dialogue and what's happening dramatically, but you've got to technically get the rhythm right, so that everything is fitting with the dialogue at the right time. And you're performing the operation to the audience that's watching it. Thackery has to present it, as well. In some ways, that's the most challenging. — Clive Owen

Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians ... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both. — Chuck Close

Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause. — Patti Smith

I am so much of a mind now to be in the audience, to watch and to experience, and to feel, rather than having to get up and perform, I want my life to be less about performing. — Alec Baldwin

A professional entertainer who allows himself to become known as a singer of folk songs is bound to have trouble with his conscience provided, of course, that he possesses one. As a performing artist, he will pride himself on timing and other techniques designed to keep the audience in his control [ ... ] his respect for genuine folklore reminds him that these changes, and these techniques, may give the audience a false picture of folk music. — Sam Hinton

Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene. — Tom Riley

The audience is like my instrument. It's not just me up there, it's collaborative. — Bobby McFerrin

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing. — William Shatner

Painting is such an individual profession. I'm not performing. There's no audience. — Jamie Wyeth

She turns her head, Bailey catches her eye, and she smiles at him. Not in the way that one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittens but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone they have not seen in some time. — Erin Morgenstern

There is no buzz like performing for a live audience. — Jack Wild

I think for me, the imaginary world was always exciting. I started in New York doing theatre, from having just one person in an audience to performing for a full house. I think I've always enjoyed playing different characters, blending into different environments and such. — Dilshad Vadsaria

The thrill of performing - that's something that hasn't changed for me. That simultaneous joy of creating something and sharing it with an audience - it's the same now as it was then, when it was just my cousins' birthday party. — Steve Buscemi

There's no room for failure performing [stand-up] for a black audience. If you don't get them right away it's tough winning them back even if you're doing top-notch material. If you didn't win them right when you walked out there, it's tough. — Hannibal Buress

I do actually like performing to a live audience. I like the response. I do a lot of Doctor Who conventions now, and the reason that I do them is that there is a live audience I can get to directly. — Sylvester McCoy

I hope to write someday and that's even more terrifying than performing. You don't just entertain the audience, you give them little bits of your soul. — Chris Colfer

To write poetry, like sincere poetry, it is like performing heart surgery on yourself without anesthesia ... in public ... You are peeling back layers. You are dissecting yourself ... You do not know what they [the audience] is going to do when you reach into yourself and rip out your organs to be displayed — Amir Sulaiman

Performing is always my biggest rush. The energy is boundless from a great crowd. I truly believe in energy as a force that is exchanged, especially in a performance situation. You give your utmost and the audience gives it back tenfold. — Matt Sorum

When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience. I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music. — Agnes De Mille

I'm not subject to their rise and fall because I'm not accepted by them, so I have my own little curve going on. A lot of it is because of how much I play, I think I connect like when all you had was Vaudeville, I think I have an audience by performing a lot! — Leo Kottke

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

To perform at the Cardiff Millennium Centre was amazing in itself - the theatre is an incredible venue and it was great to be performing so close to home. For me the best experience was in Glasgow, where I got to play Dee Dee for two weeks! The audience sang along to every song with such enthusiasm you actually couldn't hear yourself singing! That was incredible! — Francesca Jackson

I've been wanting for some time to find a way of stylizing cinema and trying to get closer to the emotional story I was telling and get rid of all the bumph that goes with it and allow the audience a more participatory experience. It was an attempt to do all of those things and to express the idea that all these people were just performing roles in their lives. — Joe Wright

Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate
the ritual often exhausts them. — Robert McKee

I feel that tennis is an art form that is capable of moving the players and the audience - at least a knowledgeable audience-in almost sensual ways. When I'm performing at my absolute best, I think that some of the euphoria I feel must be transmitted to the audience. — Billie Jean King

Sometimes, the most daunting thing about performing is making eye contact with your audience, so just look above them and at the corners of the room. Soon, you'll totally forget they're there. — Laura Marano

When you're on stage performing stand-up, things only happen one time. I've done bits where I improv a joke, and people are dying. The next show, I try to repeat it, I can't do it. Because with the first audience that was our moment. It can't happen the same way again. We were all there: a certain type of people were at that show and we all got it. — J. B. Smoove

Comedians sometimes forget that there's an audience. You gotta be conscious that you're performing for other human beings. — Jeff Garlin

I was five years old; I got addicted to being on stage. I felt like it was the most wonderful place on Earth, performing in front of an audience, who in this case were a bunch of classmates, kids my age. — Shakira

Of course I love when people are quiet, but I also love when people are comfortable. I love when people emote. The flip side of having a totally silent audience is that they're less likely to react to you in the space, and I think that's one of the great things about performing live: you get energy from the audience, and you give energy back to them. There's interaction. — Missy Mazzoli

There's a gratification that comes from performing in front of a live audience, and you can't replicate that with anything else. In the studio, the creation part of this business is fun. But, when you see the fans letting you know that they enjoy what you're doing, that's why I keep doing what I do. — Trace Adkins

Immediate gratification of a live audience makes me come alive. I miss performing in theater. I'll make my return to the stage eventually. — Brendan Dooling

If you have to explain your sense of humor, then you are performing for the wrong crowd. — Shannon L. Alder

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely. — Neil Peart

Anything that loosens you up and makes you freer is good, because that's what acting and performing is all about - being free. It gives you a better connection to the audience. — Brett Somers

I think I will always be performing; I don't think I can take that away. Because I really just enjoy it. I like getting up to sing; I like the challenge of learning new material and singing it in front of an audience. — Lea Salonga

The bus ride to the arena ... I slipped on my Discman and listened to some of my favourite music, all the while imagining myself on the ice. Visualization and imagery are very important in figure skating, or any sport for that matter. This is where you see yourself in your mind performing in front of an audience and judges. I also imagine how I am going to feel during the performance. During the bus ride, I pictured myself skating a perfect program. — Josee Chouinard

And treating poetry as a performing art emphasizes its ephemerality. A printed poem can be endlessly reprinted, photocopied, scanned, uploaded, cut and pasted - but a performance, even if somebody's there with a video camera, is one time only: the audience experiences something that won't exist when the performance is over, and which won't ever be reproduced in exactly the same form. I find that appealing. — James Arthur

And being away and not performing for a long time and really connecting with my audience for a long time, I have a great responsibility to myself and to them to do it exactly the way the process was when I was young. — Jackie DeShannon

But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across this room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich and complicated and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not a good writer. Because that means I'm going to be performing for a faceless audience instead of trying to have a conversation with a person. — David Foster Wallace