When I get onstage, I automatically feel beautiful.
So did my time on Broadway after the Xscape tour doing ‘Chicago’. Performing eight times a week put in the mindset of being onstage again.
Eric Clapton always wanted to come out onstage with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder.
When you return to the same area a few times, you get that frequent rapport with the public and the fans of the music along with having a certain warmth when you walk onstage.
It’s in my blood to tour. It’s in my blood to get on the road. It’s in my blood to go onstage.
I have to stay hydrated so I don’t pass out onstage!
When I’m onstage, I’m acting.
Somewhere during the ‘Next to Normal’ Broadway run, I found myself learning more about myself onstage than in real life, and I truly realized the beautiful, tremendous, extraordinary gift that is performing.
The backstage play, in which the private lives of theater people are put onstage for the world to see, is one of the diciest of dramatic genres.
I was wearing black clothes almost from the beginning. I feel comfortable in black. I felt like black looked good onstage, that it was attractive, so I started wearing it all the time.
So much about getting onstage is creating a connection with an audience that allows you to go different places and try different things.
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. And you know that half an hour from now, you’re still gonna be bombing. It takes a thick skin.
What I do onstage, there’s maybe .0001 percent of the population that acts like that. I talk like that because it makes me laugh, and because I know a couple of people that talk like that. They’re really that Southern. And they do funny things. I love ’em; they’re awesome. They’re good people.
I talk to people now, and they thought I was so confident. I was doing all this awesome stuff onstage, and they didn’t realize I was going through so much loneliness and hurt backstage. It was like high school.
As a rapper, you sort of act in music videos and in the persona you adopt onstage. You kinda have to put yourself out there and be courageous even to be a rapper. So, to step into acting was not that difficult a transition to make.
Americans need to call on Boomers, in their next act onstage, to behave like grown-ups. And there is no better way for them to do this than to guide young people to lives of greater meaning, effectiveness, and purpose.
In TV and movies, you get known for a certain thing, and that’s what’s expected. Onstage, people are more open to whatever character you create from one play to the next.
Once, right before a show, I realized I’d forgotten shoes. I didn’t want to wear my flip-flops onstage because I could trip. I ended up going barefoot, which actually worked out because it became my ‘thing.’
I don’t socialize in drag anymore. If I’m in drag, I’m usually onstage or in the dressing room or in a car service.
When I come onstage, I’m exploding.
When you know you have a good song, when you’re onstage, even if it’s just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.
Especially when I’m heckled, that’s a sticky situation because I don’t defuse it… I really envy guys who have a grittier onstage presence and can really go after someone. I used to teach preschool.
It’s not until you develop your own voice, your own persona onstage that you become your own comic, who you really are.
Lesbian humor isn’t trying to sell anything, it doesn’t have to sell out. Coming out as a lesbian onstage is still a very political act; if it weren’t, more women would do it.
L.A. is always great. There’s something special about L.A. And New York, for me, because it’s home. There’s nothing quite like walking onstage at Madison Square Garden.
Queen Latifah used to help me out with my kids, because while we were all out on tour – Public Enemy, Naughty By Nature, Queen Latifah, Heavy D – when Public Enemy went onstage, I didn’t have anybody solid to watch my kids. So, Latifah would help me out.
I have made stage adjustments which allow me to hear myself better onstage so that has made playing live much more enjoyable.
You’re standing onstage in a sold-out arena with people singing your music, and you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Because here’s a party that, essentially, it’s for you. And you still somehow feel like you don’t belong there. Those people all have their lives and go back home.
When I go onstage, I want to relieve your mind, your pressures.
I can do anything onstage. Here’s the misconception: You could record an album called ‘The Best of Styx.’ And all you would have to do is pay the individual songwriters a mechanical royalty.
We played in Texas about a year ago, at Emo’s, the famous country and western club in Austin. And I figured, well, if I’m finally gonna die onstage, that’s where it’s going to be!
Plays are frequently infected with ideas that came from actors or even sound engineers. Some Shakespeare scholars wonder whether some of the Bard’s lines came from onstage improvisations by actors.
I got into this business because you can get gratification from it the moment you set foot onstage.
The extremes of who I’d love to be onstage are David Bowie, Prince, and, I don’t know, Bjork.
One time I happened to use the word ‘denigrate’ onstage, and it didn’t get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.
When you’re onstage, you’re acutely aware of the reaction of a particular group of people, because it’s like a wave.
I always say, ‘Hip-hop takes me everywhere.’ It’s crazy when I step onstage, and people might not speak much English, but they know every word to your songs. It’s kind of freaky, but it’s really cool.
I have never been a different person onstage than I am off.
I sort of fell in love with it when I was in high school doing theater. And so, as sometimes happens when kids – they graduate high school, and people turn to them and say, ‘So what are you going to do with your life?’ I thought, ‘Well, I like being onstage. I like being an actor.’
I think that’s what makes a great show: when the performers onstage aren’t putting on a show, they’re legitimately just having a freaking awesome time.
When I was seven, my mom took my twin sister and me to a play. I remember being fascinated about life onstage.
I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?
I wish I had a really cool, esoteric answer, but what the process is to me is going onstage night after night after night after night until I get a new hour. And then once that hour is solidified and recorded, I move on.
Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can’t look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It’s human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don’t. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.
I love being onstage. I love the relationship with the audience. I love the letting go, the sense of discovery, the improvising.
When I was starting out, I was just bringing a garbage bag of jokes onstage, pulling them out like, ‘What about this? No? Alright.’ I was just trying to be funny about anything.
I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.
Me in my music and onstage – that’s me without any fears of judgement; that’s me when I’m shining.
I’m not drunk onstage, although I’ve done that a couple of times when I was younger. It’s partly just the way I talk – I talk like somebody in a rocking chair. I’m your 150-year-old grandmother.
When I go onstage, every situation I have to play, I feel pain. When I sing ‘Madama Butterfly’ I feel completely everything she felt: It’s horrible.
I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.
I feel like I wear kind of the same things on stage that I would wear every day, unless I’m being lazy, and then I just wear trackies. But actually, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t really walk down Kilburn High Street in a leotard, and I would wear that onstage.
After over 50 years of headlining, I’ve been received very beautifully. But I always say, when you’re onstage, you can’t please everybody. I’m sure there are people who may not take to what I do, but that’s OK.
I learned my profession onstage. I didn’t have a musical background. I had no conservatory training. I don’t play an instrument.
If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing.
