Most people want to be on TV as much as possible. I went up the ranks so fast because I was doing impressions, and nobody was really doing it when I started. I never got a chance to explore what’s my comfort level onstage.
Most of the time, it’s pretending I’m somebody else to get into a different head space. A lot of times, it’s just, ‘Who do I want to be onstage tonight? Is it going to be Marc Bolan, or is it going to be Grace Jones, or Roy Orbison?’
I was desperate for comedy to seep into me somehow, convinced that being surrounded by it would give me the confidence to go onstage myself.
People ask, like, ‘How are you going to incorporate what you do onstage into everything else?’ I’m not too worried about that. Whether it’s theater or a TV show idea, or an animated thing or, I don’t know, an animated screensaver. I really just want to keep creating things. And I’ve always been able to do that.
I love being onstage. As I’ve gotten older, it terrifies me more and more, which is interesting.
As a standup performer, I’m onstage, and it’s important how the audience is looking at me. I’m looking at whether they’re leaning forward or not, those types of things. You read an energy. And it’s the same thing in a scene with other actors.
Very few people know what it’s like being onstage looking out at a sea of bodies.
When I appear onstage, that’s my departure from Momhood – and I transform into Natalie MacMaster: the entertainer, the fiddler, the performer.
The pancreas releases insulin to make you ready for fight or flight when you’re scared. So if you don’t fight or flight – if you stay onstage, telling jokes – then your body stores more fat in your tummy which makes you insulin resistant. All comedians have fat bellies, even if they exercise.
Good comics gravitate to each other; you know who’s your type of person by watching them onstage, hopefully.
‘You Can’t Take It With You’ has eighteen people onstage at one point. Musicals entail a larger collaboration, and I love that.
Getting onstage and trying out all of my material and what works well with audiences and what doesn’t, what works well in different atmospheres, has been the best training.
Onstage I’m the happiest person in the world.
I am the audience. I want to observe people. Even when I’m playing drums onstage, I’m watching people. I’m looking at them and their faces and their T-shirts and their signs. And travelling by motorcycle, especially, the world is just coming at me.
I never used to speak to the audience at all. I never really knew what to say onstage.
I went to a concert once when I was a little kid and ran up onstage, started dancing, started saying anything that came to my head. I was like a little vaudevillian.
You know, I think whatever a comic talks about onstage is all they talk about offstage.
I get embarrassed a lot of times getting attention, but I like being onstage. Do you know what I mean? If I’m in a crowd of people and they’re all looking at me, I will feel embarrassed. It’s a strange dichotomy.
I don’t enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I’m a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: ‘What else is in the news?’ Writing is work, which I’m not comfortable with.
When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.
I probably bring four dresses on the road and rotate those. I always wear something light when I go onstage because I move around a whole lot. It’s a sweaty business.
Here’s the thing about The Go-Go’s: Onstage, any moment could be a total train wreck.
In 2004, I went onstage for the first time. They put a mike in my hand and pushed me out the door into the crowd. I did the three songs I had recorded and got out. It was the worst day of my life.
James Brown really taught me a lot – his lyrics and his performance and whatever he does when he’s onstage. I’ll always call him a legend, and I’ll always respect what he did.
I have a background in theater. At the time I read ‘The Loved Ones’ script, I was playing Catherine the Great of Russia onstage. Straight after that, I played Stella in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and Isabella in ‘Measure for Measure.’
There is a big difference between what I do onstage and what I do in my private life. I don’t put my living room on magazine pages.
You never know what’s going to happen next onstage.
It’s not about me. It’s about what I’m doing for kids. When I walk out onstage, there’s 15,000 kids that, to me, represent potential.
I’ve talked to Bill Clinton – he’s the ultimate rock star; no one’s more charming than him. People clap in a restaurant when he finishes dinner! I don’t get that treatment. I get it when I walk onstage, but not when I have dinner.
There are a lot of Israeli musicians in New York because you want to grow and go onstage, and eventually you have to get out of Israel to do that because there aren’t enough places to play.
I’ve done a lot of Shakespeare onstage, and I’m not convinced that the Earl of Oxford was the author of all those works, but I am convinced that the Stratfordian William Shakespeare was not. My feeling is that it was an amalgamation of many writers, in the same way that most films are a collaborative endeavor.
I was five years old, onstage singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ – a rock version – and I was always wanting to entertain. But the biggest thing for me is just country music has helped me get through the worst times of my life and the best times of my life. I want to give that back to people.
I love being onstage, whether it’s dancing or acting – there’s just something about being onstage.
I prefer to connect with fans from the stage. Like, I don’t have a Twitter page, or anything like that. So for me, that’s what the show is about. For me – is a way to interact with fans; being up onstage and showing them, through music – which is all I really know – the best way to say thank you.
I was basically a dork that hit the books and liked to build things and did all of the things that you weren’t supposed to do to be popular. But somehow I ended up onstage, playing guitar in front of everybody else.
When I go onstage and I play or I’m out meeting a lot of people, I’ve got to get my stuff together. It’s not actual stage fright.
The first time onstage, a light went on. ‘OK, this is my thing. I’m comfortable here. This is my thing.’
If I found a cure for a huge disease, while I was hobbling up onstage to accept the Nobel Prize they’d be playing the theme song from ‘Three’s Company’.
I was onstage singing with Luke Bryan, and he started singing a song that we hadn’t rehearsed. Both Luke and myself just winged it.
The minute you step onstage, you get eight feet taller.
A lot of people get a high from being onstage. I found ways to enjoy it. But I get it from being in the studio.
I speak onstage to try to establish some method of communication. The songs are supposed to be a way of communicating. But speech and drinks and sometimes chocolates are also a way of communicating.
The first time I was onstage, I felt like the audience was breathing with me. I don’t know if I was good or not; I just knew I was having a ball, and for the first time, I felt I belonged somewhere.
I would love to do Shakespeare, either onstage or on film.
It’s always been about the live show for us. We’re having Halloween onstage every night.
I think it’s important to be friends with the person you have to kiss onstage in front of a hundred people. You might not be friends in real life – especially if you’re in high school – but you need to at least be ‘secret friends’ for it to work. Try to be comfortable with each other.
I find a similarity between performing music onstage and acting – a reality of emotion.
When you’re onstage and you know you’re bombing, that’s very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going – you’re bombing, but you can’t stop.
The whole deal is when you walk onstage, you’re up there bigger than life. People idolize you.
I’ve been lucky enough to do a tiny bit of Shakespeare onstage over the years.
If you’re onstage thinking about what you’re going to eat when you get offstage, it’s time to finish.
People just get to see me onstage, and they don’t get whole of me.
When you’re onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it’s very artificial. You can’t really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.
I’m always trying out new stuff onstage. That’s where I do all my writing.
I absolutely loved improv! I felt very much at home being onstage. It freed me to be all sorts of people other than myself. It was an escape from myself, if you will. I still love that creative freedom of improv and making people laugh.
I started singing in coffeehouses when I was still in high school, in Santa Barbara. I took a job washing dishes and busing tables in the coffeehouse, so I could be there, and would beg permission to sing harmony with the guy who was singing onstage. That was the first time I ever got on a stage in front of people.
There’s no shame in being a support act for anyone. It’s been extremely beneficial for us to be allowed onstage for any of the artists we’ve toured with, and we’ve gotten some big exposure from them sharing their crowds with us in the past.
