When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.
The film opens up the world beyond Katniss' point of view, allowing the audience access to the happenings of places like the Hunger Games control room and President Snow's rose garden, thereby adding a new dimension to the story.
Random people, celebrities of note come to your shows over the years, and I've had some really strange ones. Like the guy from Kiss. Gene Simmons has literally been in the audience at my shows, like, four times. I don't know if he knows me; he's just a big fan of comedy.
Theatre is live content, and you can tell if you have worked your audience.
Over the years, my students influenced me greatly, and I've learned many lessons from them. I have an immense amount of respect for them, and I think that respect for your audience is the foremost requirement for anyone who wants to write.
Usually, I'm just pleasing myself and I have very similar tastes I think to an audience, what that core audience really likes.
The first time I ever saw a black audience at our concert, we were in Zimbabwe.
I will not do festivals. The thought of an audience that big frightens the life out of me.
I was in a number of school plays, one in particular, when I was 13 or 14, entitled 'Illusions.' It was put together by one of the teachers, and was about famous historical figures. I had to do the Martin Luther King 'I have a dream' speech, and some black women in the audience were clapping and crying and whooping.
'Billy Elliot' prides itself on being a family show, and it made sense to specifically cater to a family audience with an earlier evening curtain time.
The key is for the audience never to know, so I have a plan B for every illusion.
It's better to finish at the peak or soon after it, than to wait until the audience notices a decline.
The play is always fresh to me. It's not the audience's fault that I've said the words before.
I never take on anything that is just for the money or just for, you know. I always have to connect with it in a very personal way because I believe the audience will sense whether I'm into it or not, so I don't take on projects that I'm not really passionate about.
If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.
Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.
We are cannibalizing our audience by only giving them regurgitated material. Every movie is either a remake, a sequel, based on something else. Based on a former television series. Based on a successful videogame.
I've discovered that Motown and Broadway have a lot in common - a family of wonderfully talented, passionate, hardworking young people, fiercely competitive but also full of love and appreciation for the work, for each other and for the people in the audience.
Not that there weren't great shows, and not that there wasn't plenty of fine music played. It's just that the consistency and the height of where we could take it, with the help of the audience, was less, I felt, in the '90s.
The action genre is kind of designed for a young male audience. But we found on 'The Matrix' that we hit the Valhalla of movie making, which is the four quadrant audience - the young male audience, the older male audience, the young female audience and the older female audience.
An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.
No support of one star or one director or one producer can make any individual actor a star. You have to connect with the audience; the audience have to like you. That is something that cannot be manipulated or fought for or tried for. Either they like you, or they don't.
I'm a big believer in playing truth and not doing things for effect. It's not about whether you look pretty or glamorous. It's about whether people connect. That's important to me in any work I do. For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing.
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
These are very subtle things, of course, and I don't expect everyone to pick them up consciously, but I think that there is something there that you must be able to feel, there is an energy at work that I must trust my audience will be able to pick up at some level.
When you feel an audience engaged and surprised and enthusiastic, reacting to what you've planned, that is the reward. It's better than the Emmys.
Modern American magic, late 20th century magic, is tremendously disrespectful of the audience.
My favorite thing is when cartoon fans show up to my live gigs! They are always the most kick-butt audience members 'cause they're not trying to act all cool like a lot of the music fans do!
When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience.
You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.
I was always the lead role in plays. I like entertaining people. I like when you're on stage doing crazy stuff and the audience gets it.
Often I used my gut instinct to ask the questions and get the answers I thought the audience wanted to hear. Sometimes the interviewees said things that surprised even them.
The audience, they're not professionals. They just love music. It isn't necessary to play over their heads to be admired.
At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audience is looking down at the stage. Everybody in the business knows: Up for singers, down for comics. The people want to idealize a singer. They want to feel superior to a comic. You're trying to make them laugh. They can't laugh at someone they're looking up to.
I think it's the responsibility of a major opera house not only to cultivate debate and get people thinking, but also to be interfaced with things that challenge them. To challenge its audience and not just deliver things that they know, even though some of those things are wonderful.
I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.
