The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a camera or when you're on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting.
I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them.
I appreciate the additional additives and preservatives that help sell a project, but I'm sticking to what works best for me. I gotta sell the album live on stage and make people believe in the songs.
Out of 30 years of Second City I was probably the third African-American with the main stage cast. I was surprised when I first heard that. I think part of the reason that improvisation has never been popular with African-Americans is that it isn't popular in the inner cities.
When I began to choreograph and find my way pulling other artists' dreams out and changing music in a visual way, there was still a part of me that had something more to say. There was still a desire to rock a stage and ultimately perform the eight count of my dream, but there was a lot of insecurity there.
Freeing hostages is like putting up a stage set, which you do with the captors, agreeing on each piece as you slowly put it together; then you leave an exit through which both the captor and the captive can walk with sincerity and dignity.
What a thrill it was to play opposite Maurice Evans in this brilliant, dazzling musical, based on the life of two of the greatest personalities in stage history.
With stand-up you can just be yourself on stage. And ideally, you can't see the crowd most of the time - it's just lights in your face. But I still have had terrible stage fright.
When you are making a record and if you spend too much time over it, you have to record it a tone lower or cut the tones lower because you can't reach some of the notes, I find this. But when you go on stage, you have to put the key up and it really changes the whole thing.
I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial.
Americans must outgrow the unbecoming arrogance that leads us to assert that America somehow owns a monopoly on goodness and truth - a belief that leads some to view the world as but a stage on which to play out the great historical drama: the United States of America versus the Powers of Evil.
It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing - you're either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there's a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be.
Music was always a big part of my family. Only a few of us had the talent - or the courage - to walk out on a stage.
There is nothing like the high of being on stage and reaping applause, especially for emotionally needy people like me!
I'm very serious about becoming a dramatic actor. I don't want to play cameo parts walking on as Carl Lewis the athlete. I want to go on stage or screen and be taken seriously.
I play the piano a lot at home. I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage. I don't think I'll get the chance for a while.
Stage is about imperfections and working with them, whether it be from you or the audience.
Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them.
Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live.
Performing live on stage is such a community, whether it's my musicians or a cast of a show that I'm in. And then when you're in the studio or on set, it's a much more solitary experience. Both can serve me at different times in my life. And when I go back and forth from one to the other, it helps me appreciate all of them much better.
I've been booed on stages. I'm a little bit tougher than to walk off a stage because someone says something ugly.
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.
It was a big deal for us to be on Ozzfest, especially as one of the main headliners and being the band that wasn't announced: the mystery band. We'd never played the second stage at Ozzfest, and all of a sudden we're on the main stage.
I received the most fantastic welcome to the Broadway Theatre community. I walked on stage to tremendous applause and a long standing ovation, wondering when I was ever going to be able to say my first line!
Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage.
In my own mind, we are a much happier and much more functional family and a much more well balanced group of individual s both off and on the stage - in the current incarnation.
On stage, I like to dress up a bit. I'm not scared to be like a character up there.
I read stories aloud at every stage. I listen to my writer friends when they kindly offer criticism. I listen to my husband when he tells me something doesn't seem right. I have my mother's boyfriend, Loring Janes, read to make sure I get everything right with the machines and guns.
When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I'd constantly be that guy who'd get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.
I've had some 'riotous excursions of the human spirit' alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it's time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way - they earned their stripes in combat.
It's hard either way, at home or on the bus, I think the hardest thing probably for me is going one second from being mom to right out on the stage and having to be that person too. It's hard to switch gears.
For a long time, we've worked on detecting planets with whatever was at hand, making use of existing small telescopes or even amateur telescopes. It's time to move on to the next stage.
A lot of my best stuff is just ad libs on stage, and that's one thing that I've gotten back to at the live show.
Hiphop has remained in an infantile stage and has not been allowed to grow.
For the three years I was in school training to be an actor, I was told, 'It's very unlikely you'll work at all on the stage or in film', so I feel I have to take all the opportunities I can.
I like the good life too much, I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.
