No one will ever argue that someone could have played Helen Keller better than Patty Duke. It was an incredibly demanding role and I don’t think anyone can argue that it was a false performance.
I never underestimate or overestimate anybody. Really we have to try and find levels of performance for ourselves first.
There’s really no difference between what I do and what a male filmmaker might do. I mean we all try to make our days, we all try to give the best performances we can, we try to make our budget, we try to make the best movie we possibly can.
To do well at a new competition, you need a lot of good performances.
So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance.
My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we’ve become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.
All the aggressive actions I do to myself I would never dream of doing in my own life – I am not this kind of person. I cry if I cut myself peeling potatoes. I am taking the plane, there is turbulence, I am shaking. In performance, I become, somehow, like not a mortal.
My favorite movie is ‘The Women’ from 1939. It’s been my favorite movie since I was like 12 years old. I love the dialogue, really. It’s just a lot of really strong female performances. Rosalind Russell kills it, you know.
In the theater, you go from point A to point Z, building your performance as the evening progresses. You have to relinquish that control on a film.
I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song ‘Radio Gaga.’
I get nervous every time, for every single performance, before getting up on that stage.
I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances. She suggested an audition.
No matter what the character is, I just say to myself ‘If I, Melissa George, was in that situation, how would I react?’ and once you do that you can just go for it, and hopefully the performance comes through.
I suffer from stage fright, so I blabber on stage and stop midway through my performances. I cannot even write a cheque, as it makes me nervous. Being around people makes me nervous. But I’m very comfortable in front of the camera, and this I realised many films later.
I think the gains to be achieved by a combination of reforms and labor market adjustments are going to be more permanent and will provide a basis for reducing unemployment and improving export performance, and sustaining growth, in a way that is more sound and permanent.
Most corporations have human-resources processes that involve discussions with your manager, performance evaluations, calibrations for performance and potential succession planning.
Nothing feels worse than having to break the stage down before the performance, and I mean nothing.
We’re all so mauled by information, but it’s recycled information. We need to shut it out. So, you’ve got to get bizarre. This is an artist’s purpose – to break away from the recycled. Performance art can do that.
What we’ve seen this season is that if something that will enhance performance is available, some players will indulge… unless the penalty is an absolute deterrent.
I think we raised about 20,000 pounds. There was a live performance thing so we thought we’d donate the equipment for an online charity in Britain. I hated to part with my guitar, but it was for such a great cause.
Pressure is a positive thing and it makes no difference on your performance if it is not there.
Being in an acting class, you always feel like, you know, you’re insecure, a lot of ways, when the teacher is commenting on your performance.
The performances I enjoy are the ones that are hard to read or ambiguous or left-of-centre because it makes you look closer and that’s what humans are like – quite mysterious creatures, hard to pinpoint.
The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that’s grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.
When companies create ridiculous and demoralizing rules to halt the outlandish behavior of a few individuals, it’s a management problem. There’s no sense in alienating your entire workforce because you don’t know how to manage performance. It makes a bad situation that much worse.
I can never focus on a film because I’m conscious of my performance.
An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.
I did the one concert, and I was not bitten by the conducting bug, and I thought I was done, but then the phone started to ring, and gradually, over time, I started conducting more and more. Now a third of my performances are with orchestras.
Playing in Milan is never easy because the San Siro always commands great performances.
Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.
I like the detail work of telling a story in small pieces, as is done in movie-making, and also the long leap of faith needed to see a theatre performance through each night. Both require focus and self-discipline.
My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But that’s just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun.
The best piece of advice my father gave me was to always work hard. One thing he instilled: Proper preparation prevents poor performances.
Conductors don’t suffer, they are part of the performance.
Did you know I staged the first performance in America of At the Hawk’s Well?
It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.
I’ve had the healthy and sobering experience of constantly working with music that is invariably better than any performance of it can be.
For me rappers and dancers are poets and artists and often times the most interesting performances are given by them.
You have your structure, but within it, it gets fuller and you can highlight other parts of the performance.
I’ve lost a few notes on the top. But I’ve gained a little insight about what makes people comfortable when they’re listening or watching a performance of mine. It usually has to do with singing something that isn’t vocally too strenuous.
I still get thrilled by the energy that is a live performance, the fear and the panic and the electricity that happens on the night. I think jolting myself every once in a while with that fear is a good thing for me.
But now in this day and age, people are more prone to go out to try new things to enhance their performance on the field – to enhance their physical appearance.
Two, I actually learned a lot of things that served me very well when it came to repeating performances on stage, because it is a craft and you do need a technique for it.
I had to help to coax the performances and I really enjoyed that extra responsibility.
I used to be a drummer in a band, and I really loved playing the drums, so I look forward to the right opportunity to do that at some point. Maybe even on TV. Every single live performance I’m doing on TV, I want it to be different and unique.
To pay 60 musicians for rehearsal and performance is quite something, and I decided I wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of situation financially again, unless somebody else was taking care of that end of it.
I have learned from my experiences in this industry that there is absolutely no way to control people’s opinions on your performance in your movie. You go out there, promote your film and hope people like the work you did.
The biggest problem for badminton is wind direction and lighting. If those problems are not solved, it seriously impacts players’ performances on the court. If a high-level player’s performance is affected by these factors, they suffer setbacks and cannot be fully satisfied on the court.
A good athlete always mentally replays a competition over and over, even in victory, to see what might be done to improve the performance the next time.
I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that’s what I’m always looking for, a director that’s going to help me go places I’ve never been before.
I can’t say this enough – the food that you put into your bodies can actually help you get better grades. And it can also affect your performance in sports and other activities too. You see, when you give your body the best possible fuel, you have more energy, you’re stronger, you think more quickly.
Wal-Mart hires average people but squeezes above average performance and results out of them.
The objective is to give high performances for Manchester City today, tomorrow, and in the future.
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.
I’m interested in all forms of performance, yet I think it’s difficult to be as equally talented in all of them as they call for such different skills. At the moment, I still feel I’m learning and want as much experience and variety as possible.
