My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.
I love connecting with the audience, and there's more ways than one to do that.
A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.
I've always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can't tell to an audience. There's a fine line you have to tread because you don't know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.
What you want is the opportunity to work and an audience. Prizes after that are just a great big bonus.
It's an incredible thing when you are creating something in a moment with the other people on stage and with an audience, and you are all experiencing it together as it exists in that one night. It's a magical feeling.
My problem is that the audience is more fiction-literate than ever. In Shakespeare's day, you probably expected to see a play once or twice in your life; today you experience four or five different kinds of fiction every day. So staying ahead of the audience is impossible.
If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.
Comedy is harder, because if there's no laughs, it's pretty bad. But drama, if there's no reaction, you can say, 'Well, it's not their cup of tea. Maybe it's too heavy for the audience.'
I just get such a connection from an audience. You play with them. I get mad at them. I yell at them. They yell at me. It's just fun.
Abortion is a hard thing for Hollywood to deal with because it is so controversial and you don't want to alienate half your audience by sending one message or the other.
I work hard for the audience. It's entertainment. I don't need validation.
A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers.
Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.
I love playing live, I don't like studios all that much. I need the reaction of the audience.
In the Netherlands I read the first chapter of Exquisite Corpse to an audience that laughed in all the places I thought were funny - an experience I've never had in America!
Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.
Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra - not choreography to the audience.
We're in this entertainment business really to give the audience what they want.
I just like observing people - it's something I've done ever since I was a kid, and I got really good at it. That's a big part of why I became a comedian. My audience is filled with every kind of person you can imagine, and I love that.
We go to movies to be taken away to another place, to be dazzled, to dream, to hopefully be filled with wonder. The design of the world and the look of the film is all in service of trying to create that feeling of wonder in the audience.
With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that strength because it's one of the few advantages books still have.
Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
You have to make films you feel strongly about. And then hope you can find the audience.
If you like quick put-downs and aggressive interactions with the audience, you will probably not enjoy the rambles of an unusual character act making jokes about cats for an hour.
It's up to the audience. It always has been.
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I don't care how good a song is - if it holds back the storyline, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it.
It takes two years on the stage for an actor or an actress to learn how to speak correctly and to manage his voice properly, and it takes about ten years to master the subtle art of being able to hold one's audience.
To me, using music is creating a shorthand with an audience. And I love music so much.
There's one thing about TV that I really think is true. If you find the right cast and the right writers, and you got some chemistry going, even if a show is taking a little while to find an audience, if you keep it there, that audience will find it. Because that's what happened with 'Cheers.'
Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you're putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can't second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.
I think the audience doesn't know a movie's lit, but they feel it. Because you've walked in a forest many times, or in a park, so you know how it looks. When you start lighting, subconsciously you know there is something that is absolutely wrong.
When my novels are packaged as exclusively for women, I'm not only cut off from a vital portion of my audience but clearly labelled as an author the literary establishment is free to dismiss.
There is an audience for every play; it's just that sometimes it can't wait long enough to find it.
It's one of the things that looks good written down, but the reality is that you think about the pieces you're doing and try to bear in mind everyone in the audience.