I find performing very difficult. It’s difficult to be a good actor. I get very nervous, even though it sounds disingenuous, because you could legitimately go, ‘Well, why do it?’
My wife and I, we started a foundation about companion animal rescue, but there’s a group called Performing Animal Welfare Society just outside of Sacramento… and they offered me a job as an elephant keeper.
I like performing. I like partnering with an audience.
Performing King Charles in Mike Bartlett’s astonishing play in London and New York has been one of the high points of my career.
There’s no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I’m performing.
San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.
I really enjoy DJing but I couldn’t DJ exclusively. I couldn’t produce exclusively either, that would involve spending a lot of time in isolation. But l do enjoy performing the music l create to people. It’s a release for me.
The world is a complicated place, and there’s a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.
My mother was Irish; she had this great sense of humor, and both my parents loved films. There was a very vibrant discourse about politics and everything that was going on in the world where I grew up. So I was genetically predisposed to go into the performing arts.
There are definitely people who are stuck in the ’60s and there are definitely people who think I am and it’s just not true. I was performing for a long time before the ’60s and I’ll be doing exciting interesting things for along time to come.
I would like to do one of Ilaiyaraaja’s songs. After all, I did play drums for him and have watched him closely while composing, recording and performing. I would like to do an album of Mohammed Rafi’s Hindi songs, too.
If you have a native monetization system where the atomic unit of content is the ad unit, that scales down all the way to a small screen experience. That’s why Twitter is performing so well on mobile.
I’ve always loved music, but I never really played anything. After ‘Walk the Line’ and learning to play guitar, and having that sense of performing, I think that certainly opened the door for me, for music.
You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.
I had to get used to wearing a mask and wearing a prosthetic and performing with those things while singing and expressing myself through stylized movement, while keeping it as human as possible so the audience could be closer to the horror of the Phantom.
Do people ever ask me to say ‘Wow?’ Never in interviews, but a few times on the street. I don’t do it. I try to get away from them as quickly as possible and explain that I’m not a performing seal.
When I’m performing music, it’s like I’m doing a big improv.
Painting is such an individual profession. I’m not performing. There’s no audience.
I’ve been performing since 1955. I’m going to have to keep performing till I die because I’m not going to die in some rocking chair with a big ol’ beer belly.
One day, when I was still living at home, a friend told ‘Texas’ Jean Valli about me. She was originally from Syracuse, N.Y., and lived in New Jersey but sang country. One night, she had me come up on stage where she was performing. I sang ‘My Mother’s Eyes,’ and she was knocked out.
Maybe I just wasn’t a show-biz type. I didn’t miss performing at all.
Success happened little by little for me. I tasted the flavor of fame in small doses: I started at 10 years old when I won a music contest; I was performing at birthday parties, company meetings.
I know, if I would have won ‘X-Factor’ and if I would have continued in that lane, I would have spiraled out of control. Performing on there was good, but it wasn’t me. It was me compromising for the judges, just different people around.
I think I get certain pleasure from writing what I’m performing.
I ended up performing on a full time basis and I never got to Julliard at all.
I don’t know what I would have done without acting. I officially fell into it around age 6 in a class play that reimagined ‘The Ugly Duckling.’ My joy in performing was so boundless, you would have thought I’d just won a Tony.
I love singing and I love performing and just making things perfect.
I didn’t know I wanted to act until it was around 21. I had just come back to Los Angeles after two and half years of traveling and working as a dancer and singer and was looking for a new performing art to study. I started taking acting classes and fell in love.
All I have to concentrate on is my performing.
I always wanted to be an actor ever since I was a little kid. I knew that I had to do something related to performing arts, and I enjoyed acting the most as it incorporated so many different art forms.
I prefer the competitive atmosphere of a classroom setting, like yoga or Pilates. That keeps me going. Although performing on stage is great exercise!
When I act, I feel like I am a color in someone else’s painting – I can be the best blue that there is, but I’m still only part of their entire picture – but, with music, when I am performing with Reserved For Rondee, I am the painter, you know?
When I watch myself on camera, in any capacity – being interviewed, performing, 20 years ago or yesterday – there’s a part of me that really doesn’t grasp that it’s me.
Writing is sort of putting a puzzle together halfway. Then, performing it has always been the completion of it. Once that happens, I’m feeling verbally communal with other people. It’s out there and I feel so much better about it.
When I’m performing, I’m not even thinking about the song. I’m thinking about the audience.
The West Virginia NASA Space Grant took me under their wing and taught me everything about applying for internships, scholarships, and performing research at the undergraduate level.
I wasn’t properly performing in Canada. I was just starting out, and when everyone starts out, they’re terrible. I’m sure there are some Kellyanne Conway videos of me just really dying on a stage.
A lot of those comics can’t hold down relationships and they’ve got no other life apart from performing. They sleep in their Jags and a lot of them can’t even talk. All they can do is tell gags.
I don’t think when I’m doing music. Things just happen. I’ve even taken my clothes off while performing. But then I’m so shy that I can’t even take my clothes off in the dressing room, even though it’s just the other guys in the band in here with me. It’s really weird.
I’m very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There’s a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I’ve always felt a little shy with it.
I was always lonesome. The only time I felt accepted or wanted was when I was on stage performing. I guess the stage was my only friend: the only place where I could feel comfortable. It was the only place where I felt equal and safe.
If I’m performing in the United States, I’m able to speak Spanglish, and the crowd comprehends. If I’m in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, then I’m completely Spanish. I feel like a New Yorker that represents all Latinos.
I have been performing in the street for more than 50 years: magic for basically 60 years, and the high wire 45 years. The beauty of it is that it’s never the same. It’s never easy. And yet, part of my art is to make it look easy.
I definitely like performing to a crowd that’s there to see a female hero.
Performing live is a part of who I am.
People say my world is dark. No, there’s a lot of lightness in my world. But I know very well that I’m not normal when I’m performing.
I’m terrified of performing live.
The word ‘theatrical’ makes me cringe, because it suggests a performance is staged, put on, rehearsed. And while all this is true for an opera, I believe the act of singing and performing should always be honest, raw, guttural.
The possibilities are endless now, with performing, getting your music online, getting your own website and getting your music out there. I think that’s very cool and amazing.
To have my fan club. I am very proud of doing everything. I try to support my parents, friends and fans. I am also proud of my performing in the visual arts, and motion television.
Do you know how many concerts I’ve done in my whole life, in more than 35 years of performing? Sixty-four.
Touring is what we work so hard for – performing every night to huge crowds and getting to see all our fans close up.
People don’t mind you feeling low if you are still performing. But if you’ve shared too much, and suddenly your performance dips, that’s when they start doubting you.
I think any performing artist can do films, or, as a matter of fact, anybody out there in the street can be a film actor with no experience whatsoever if you’ve got a good director.
I prefer film to the stage. I always like the rehearsal better than I like performing.
My show mode is that the dressing room is like going into the cockpit. Going down the stairs is like going on the runway, and once we begin performing, it’s flight time. I’m just floatin’ on that stage.
