Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My fondest memories were watching the Beastie Boys get prepped to come on stage. They had a lot of antics and they play a lot of basketball... then they were giving out cameras to the crowd, and performing from the bleachers. The most important thing I learned was that you control your crowd, not the other way around.
There are so many things that can go wrong while performing. I've had violin strings break; I've had pants that were slowly falling down, and I'd have to pull them up in between every song; my hairpiece was falling out, so a big chunk of hair was just flapping around as I danced, and I've completely fallen on my butt.
It's all about the mood I'm in and the scene I'm writing. 'Cause work controls my life, writing controls my life, performing controls my life. So I don't listen to any music that's not an influence on what I'm working on that day. Music is a big influence in my work and sometimes drives the energy of where I want to go.
I began my career performing in plays and musicals in New York, but by the mid-'80s, opportunities in Hollywood beckoned and I made the move to Los Angeles. It was a good decision. Work took off, but most important, I met my family out there - my husband, Bill, and the children we would adopt: Elijah, Mae-Mae, and Aron.
It's true that my research expertise is in biology: for example, the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus, and monkey pox, and not bacteriology as in the case of the anthrax organism. It's also true that I have never, ever worked with anthrax in my life. It's a separate field from the research I was performing at Fort Detrick.
Going to the theater or having the honor of performing in theater reminds you of your humanity in a very different way. It's a real release and an incredible challenge. But the stage is a dangerous place. You gotta be trained. Plus, crowds like when things go wrong. I think that's part of the thrill. Anything can happen.
I did a 'Last Comic Standing' audition in 2006, where you're just performing for three people in a comedy club, in a big comedy club, and I remember them cutting me off, asking about my name in the middle of one of my jokes. Yeah, it's just real weird when you're doing stand-up in that type of sterile, unnatural setting.
Sometimes it's hard for me to dress for normal situations. A lot of the time I'm either performing or travelling - so what I wear is either really fun or just really comfortable. For anything in between I think, 'Oh God, I don't know how to dress myself. But when I get on stage I'm just like, 'I can wear anything I want!'
I knew that I wanted to be an actor; how to go about it was the question. I went to Australia for my studies; from there I told my dad that I also want to do a course in performing arts, but my father refused. So I completed my studies and came back. But I kept poking him, saying that acting is something that I want to do.
I loved being on Broadway, but performing has become exhausting, and I just don't want to live in New York anymore. I'm just sick of the competition in New York, the feeling that I always have to rehearse to keep up my performance. I don't feel like rehearsing, even though it should be my favorite thing in the world to do.
I was with my band at a karaoke bar in Japan when it was very big there, and they got up and made fools of themselves without practicing properly. I didn't understand why they were doing that. It was like they were making fun of the genre by performing badly. But I didn't get up and sing, so I don't know what it feels like.
I realised after doing 'Tanu Weds Manu' that I had become fat and was not performing to the mark. I realised that I had become a terrible actor. I did 'Jodi Breakers,' which did not do well. So, I moved away from the film industry and lived with the common man to know where I was lacking and what do they want from an actor.
I don't gamble anymore since I had a kid. I have fun in Vegas. I see shows, Cirque du Soleil. Don Rickles was in town last time I was there. I'll have lunch with George Wallace. I just look in the Weekly calendar and see who's performing, and inevitably, we all meet up late night at one of the casinos. Jesus, I sound boring.
Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.
No matter how many times people say it - 'Oh, I'm just writing this for myself' 'Oh, I'm just doing this for myself' - nobody's doing it for themselves! You're doing it for an audience. So whether I'm performing or writing a book or playing music, it's definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.
When they told me I had to have a heart operation, my main memory is standing in my kitchen and thinking what I would really miss was my little tea towel. Not for one minute did I think, 'Oh, I'm going to really miss performing.' The things you're going to miss are your wife, your egg cup, your seat that you sit in to watch TV.
I think that everybody's worked on shows where you feel like maybe a divide has happened between the talent and the crew. Those are the hardest jobs to do your best in, because as you're performing, you're aware that the people around you, because they haven't been afforded the respect that they deserve, they're not as invested.
You're supported by everything in New York if you want to be a performing artist. You come here, you can change your name. You leave home, you come here, you're severed from family obligations - the old identity drops away as soon as you come to New York because you're coming to New York, if you're an artist, to be someone else.
Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You've got to - you've got the human game preserve to play off of. And it's a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you're playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.
We can never make ourselves better by trying... praying more or longer, studying more of the Word, performing good works, etc. Don't get me wrong... it's not bad to do any of these things. In fact, it's good. It's just that doing them in God's power is the only way those things will have any real and lasting effect in our lives.
'Star Trek' is a 'Wagon Train' concept - built around characters who travel to worlds 'similar' to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which become our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser 'S.S. Yorktown,' performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission which helps create our format.
My brother Trev went to the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and he used to do his monologues and stuff and rehearse in our apartment. So I used to hear him all the time doing these things over and over and over. And when I was a little girl, I used to soak up everything - like anything anyone did, I soaked it up.
I'm always about trying to fill a need with what I do in my artistry. There is definitely a need in the performing arts world for a movement to come along that seriously connects with a next generation audience while still maintaining the timeless artistic objectives present throughout the history of the American music tradition.
One of the beautiful gifts of dance is that you're so in tune with your body so early on. I was very comfortable in my skin at a very early age, performing onstage and wearing interesting costumes. And I give so much credit to my mom - she never made me feel that my costume was wrong, or bad, even when there was not a lot to them!
I think every athlete will tell you no matter what sport you're in, when you train so hard and when you care so much about doing what you do, there's a little bit of nerves that come with that. But nerves that won't prevent you form performing, nerves that, hopefully, allow you to be that much more motivated and inspired to do well.
At this point in my life - age 24 - I have chosen a fairly strange path that not many are walking. I am a professional spoken word poet who tours the world performing and teaching. I run an organization called Project VOICE dedicated to using this art form as an education and empowerment tool in schools and communities of all kinds.
I just want to live on the road. I can't understand artists that don't want to perform and, like, get on stage and do their songs for all their fans every night. If I'm not performing every night, I get totally depressed. I know that sounds really weird, but I hate sitting at home and not having a 1 A.M. performance now. It kills me.
Before I did comedy, I'd freestyle with all of my friends. In high school and into college, I recorded songs with my friends, not to perform but just to play for them. So I've had interest in music for a while. Early on, I'd host a lot of music open nights or hip-hop nights, so a lot of my early experience performing was around music.
Performing live on stage is such a community, whether it's my musicians or a cast of a show that I'm in. And then when you're in the studio or on set, it's a much more solitary experience. Both can serve me at different times in my life. And when I go back and forth from one to the other, it helps me appreciate all of them much better.
Stars wide of belt often cultivated a gentlemanly grandeur, a groomed refinement that filtered through their fingertips - the dainty fidgets of Hardy's plump digits, Orson Welles performing magic tricks with nimble dexterity, Jackie Gleason lofting a teacup to his lips as if he were Lady Bracknell - or through a fine set of twinkle-toes.
The very first concert I ever went to was a Green Day concert when I was 12 years old, at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, Ont., and I remember right after seeing them perform I started a band, and I wanted to get up in front of people and start performing. Ten years later, to be on the Green Day 'American Idiot' tour is really awesome.
I really have been enjoying performing more lately than I have in a long time and you know, it's all about that sort of centered feeling that I have now. You know, thanks to, not just my kid, but her father before her. You know, I have a kind of a grounding through them that I really relish, and I think is also good for my work, you know.
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.
I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.
You are punished only when you are not performing as per expectation, and not because you belong to a particular religion, caste, or creed. Here, you fail because your vision is not right or you have not worked hard. That's why I believe we have true democracy in the film industry. How I wish the rest of the country was like the industry!
When I finished performing 'I Won't Give Up' for the first time, I opened my eyes, and I think there was maybe six people in there when I started, and when I finished there was about 30 people, all standing around with their jaws dropped in complete silence. I said, 'Okay, I think this song has some power to it.' So coffee shops work for me.
I think I'm a story-based artiste. So I would opt for the performance-oriented role. I usually go by intuition while choosing a script. Also, I do not analyse my performance, nor do I bother about how my film has been performing at the box office. I personally love challenges and am game for taking up things which I haven't attempted before.
Bono told me how to dance in high heels and he also told me about U2's Glastonbury performance and how everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, including him ripping his trousers on stage. I think he was lunging and his trousers ripped! He was telling me how he had to find a new way of performing that didn't involve moving.
I guess I think like deep inside, I know that it's like, it's a different kind of performing, it's not really... You're not performing like a guitar player or a singer is performing, you know what I mean? So it's weird to be in the same type setup as one of those. 'Cause I'm not really doing much, you know, like technically it's not that hard.
When I was 9, I auditioned for an arts school in Toronto with a few of my friends. The sole reason we auditioned was that we found out you got to miss a couple days of school to do the audition. Without actually wanting to go to arts school, I accidentally got in. My parents encouraged me to try it, and I ended falling in love with performing.
I would like all my friends, followers, fans and fellow travelers to know that I am fighting cancer and will therefore be taking a break from performing while getting the treatment and cure. I shall of course be continuing to write music - in my world it just has to be part of the therapy - and I fully expect to be back in good shape next year.
When I was in school, if I was talking as myself and I was presenting something as myself or having to answer a question, I was so nervous. I would get red in the face; I would feel sweaty. I hated it. But anytime I was performing, like, if it was a talent show, or if it's through wrestling, I'm portraying or being someone else, I'm so comfortable.
When I started out, Jay Leno used to say you're not as good as you think you can be until at least your sixth year. I was like, what the hell is he talking about? 'Cause I was in my third year, and I thought, 'I got this.' I kept videos of myself performing, and in my fifth year I watched my third year and realized he couldn't have been more right.
I don't personally feel comfortable performing in a comedy club, mainly because as an audience member, I've never enjoyed that experience. It feels a little bit theme-park-ish to me, in that it's a club whose product is comedy. I find that weird. It's like those specialty chocolate stores, where everything is chocolate. It's too specific. I like going somewhere that specializes in variety.
We consciously use only a small portion of our brain, but we're constantly performing complex operations in other areas even though we're unaware of it. Savants gain access to unconscious areas when the brain's bossy left hemisphere is muted. The left is in charge of much of our organized thought and decision-making and tends to suppress the right side, which generally rules creative activities.