If you’re an open channel when you’re onstage, if you’re just a vessel, things are going to come out that are stored away deep in your DNA.
But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in ‘The Diary of Anne Frank.’ The second thing she did was a play about Freud called ‘The Far Country.’ She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.
I’m generally a fairly shy, withheld person. But when I get onstage, I get a bit mad.
I like to pick out a certain part of each show I’m in and I watch it when I’m not onstage or in my dressing room. I’ll go down to the stage and watch that part of the show each night.
I learned early on that you do yourself a disservice trying to replicate the record onstage every night. As a player, and for the audience I think, it’s a mistake.
What I learned is that acting is to a large extent about trying to stave off self-doubt long enough to be natural and real onstage.
I’ve felt emotions onstage that I never felt before; it has strengthened me as a person and as an artist.
I’m not saying I’ll never go solo – never is a long time – but I’ve always been onstage with someone else. That way, you’re in it together, and you can feel, together, when the songs are right.
I meditate and pray before going onstage – it helps me focus.
It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.
I love to create something new every night onstage; that makes a big difference.
Atlanta was a welcoming presence for a lot of artists; they called it ‘the Mecca of the South.’ I got to see the Negro Ensemble Company, Cicely Tyson, Geraldine Page, Ruby Dee, all onstage.
I went to see some voguing ballrooms and krump battles, and I was hypnotized by their body language. These guys, who are usually very poor, become stars onstage once a month in a ballroom or in a battle.
I’d rather be onstage with a pig – a duet with Jennifer Lopez and me just ain’t going to happen.
My mom was like, ‘You talk so much. You have too much energy. Why don’t you just join the play or something?’ It was a comedy, and I got laughs in rehearsal, but onstage, in front of a whole audience, I got a lot of laughs.
I love the chemistry that can be created onstage between the actors and the audience. It’s molecular, even, the energies that can go back and forth. I started in theater, and when I first went into movies, I felt that my energy was going to blow out the camera.
When I got a part in ‘All American Girl,’ in 1994, I remember thinking, ‘Now I have a series, I’m not going to need to do standup,’ but every night I’d go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.
People are always quick to judge SPW because of the fact that I wear heels. For me, I just have no choice. This is just how I feel beautiful and how I feel awesome. I would just be so uncomfortable onstage if I was wearing something else.
Traveling the world was a constant thing, rich with experiences. But all of it was relative to being able to play live onstage and really stretch out.
Girl bands still do just copy the way men move onstage. To me, that is so backwards, so un-radical.
I had to keep up with my schoolwork so I could keep up my grades. That was tough to balance both being a superstar onstage but being a normal kid trying to get her math homework done.
The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they’re ordering food, they’re out for the night, and there’s also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they’re waiting to hear what you say. So you’d better have something to say.
I only wore makeup when I went onstage.
For the second album, ‘Discovery,’ when we had to think about doing a live show I think we were not happy with the way it would look like and sound like. We were not happy coming onstage with just two or three samplers and a few drum machines, you know?
I loved Roy Acuff with all my heart, and I never dreamed I’d be able to meet him or see him onstage, or especially become good friends with him. For all this to happen, it’s hard to explain what a dream this is when you love something as much as I love traditional country music.
I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn’t even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one’s mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I’m going in is eventually, you won’t know if it’s a joke or not.
I think there’s kind of a comfortability with me onstage – and I think my cool factor is not having one. I’m not extra cool or extra different.
I never wanted to be a magician. I never wanted to be a comedian. I never wanted to be onstage.
While I was with Procol Harum, the only time I’d see my guitar was either when I walked onstage or in the studio.
That’s part of what made me interested in theater as a kid. It made it acceptable to be a man for an hour onstage.
I thought I was going to be a lot more freaked out by being naked onstage. I think on film I would have been more freaked out, because film is less forgiving. But onstage it’s lit so beautifully. It would make my mother look good.
Onstage I have a natural chutzpa that audiences like. I’m out there.
I do understand that onstage there are times when you think, ‘I could not be more alive than I am at this moment. I can’t do most things in life. This is what I’m for.’
My general advice for writers/comedians is, make stuff you like and are proud of. Put it in a place where people can see it, whether that’s onstage or on the Internet or wherever. Just do the things that make you happy creatively, and then show them to people.
In a strange way, I’m way more comfortable onstage than anywhere else.
There’s the human side of people who are in public life that connects people. Whether it’s favorable or unfavorable, it gives them some connection with the person who’s onstage, and I think those connections are edifying.
People come up to me as I leave the stage after a performance and tell me tey saw my mother onstage with me every time I sing. I keep a sense of humor about it.
When you become a professional, there is all this other stuff you have to do. That part is the job, capital J-O-B. They’re very different things, but they’re all part of the same career. Once you get onstage and you get to perform, that’s your reward for doing your job.
I just always found it easier to be the same guy onstage as you are offstage.
I feel like any single woman of color who’s been onstage has a Shakespeare monologue in her back pocket, and a monologue from ‘For Colored Girls.’ It’s just part of what you should have, as a woman of color.
I grew up in a family of actors. I grew up onstage. The choice for me wasn’t, ‘Do I want to be an actor or not?’ I always felt like that’s just ingrained in you, the need to perform. The choice was, ‘Do you want to do this professionally or not?’
I don’t really move onstage; all I do is just gradually hunch more and more and jut out at the people in the front row.
If you’re politically correct, chances are you’re not coming to one of my shows. I get to go onstage and say things that everybody thinks all the time, but can’t say out loud.
No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn’t be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes.
I’ve done sexual stuff before – onstage, which is even more emotionally difficult. With a TV crew around, you are stopping and starting; it becomes really technical. It’s not erotic at all.
I’ll never stop acting, but music is another passion of mine. I just love creating projects in the entertainment field and performing onstage or in front of a camera.
Onstage, I don’t want to be thinking about my outfit, I want to think about what I’m doing, so I’ll try to dress as comfortably as possible.
I had one guy say, ‘I watched your show and didn’t agree with what you said.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s a joke. How could you not agree? I can understand you saying it’s not funny.’ But it’s like my going onstage and doing a knock-knock and somebody going, ‘I disagree. There’s no door here.’
I’ve been making fun of administrations since I was a teenager onstage.
Jodi Melnick is hotly self-absorbed. Her onstage musicians are much too loud, and like so many narcissistic performers, she goes on much too long: She’s interested in herself; why wouldn’t we be?
As a child, I loved being onstage. I loved singing, I loved the lights, I loved the adrenaline. I even loved learning lines. I was completely obsessive.
I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.
I still have my eyes on the prize: I want to be that old lady onstage shaking her hips and singing her greatest hits.
I go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I’m saying, and I track it.
You study all your life, you work really hard to do your best work onstage and onscreen, and then you make your best money playing an ant.
