Quotes About Rehearsal

Oh I am trying to remember, we would read the script after we did the show.

Often in television, you read a script and you're amazed that you get the scene given to you.

I find it difficult to work if I don't know the lines, you know, and not just knowing - they're second nature to me. Then, whatever happens in the performance when you're actually doing it, you're not going to go off. You're going to retain all of that. So I like to have my lines.

If you are a stand-up you can hone your material over successive performances, based on the audience response. Changing a single word or altering the pace or emphasis can make a previously failed witticism work.

As actors, we need to do our parts exactly the way they have visualised it, because if we don't, we have to keep doing it many times over.

I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.

The virus is fostering a commonality that we weren't aware of, a biological commonality, where someone else's health and behavior can really affect our own—whether they have health insurance, whether they are wearing their mask. It's a rehearsal for climate change in that we recognize that there is no escaping our predicament. There's no other place to go. We're coming to see that we're really all in the same boat.

When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects.

On a TV show, for instance, dancers have to be paid for a week and a half rehearsal time. So unless they're vital to a production, they're just not used.

My fear with 'Lear' was that I would not have the physical or vocal strength. But this play, it's all in your head. That was one of the really interesting things when we were rehearsing it: We were all exhausted because it was all up here.

People probably have different philosophies about this, but I think that when you're first shaping the play and trying to find a character, the initial actors that develop it end up imprinting on it - you hear their voices; you hear their rhythms. You can't help but to begin to write toward them during the rehearsal process.

If I do too many takes, I'm too self-conscious. I think I'm better in first scenes.

You don't go out and play Beethoven's 'Opus 111' without having rethought about it every time you play.

Memory is a rehearsal for a show that never goes on.

Basically, the actor's job is to pay attention to the script.

I have five, six, seven things I do before those lines are in my brain. I say them like I'm a robot; I sing them. I put a pencil in my mouth, and I say them. I cook. I play with a cushion and say them - so they really are inside of me.

Certain movies like 'Wag The Dog,' we used improv on every scene that we did. Pretty much, we would shoot from the script and then some stuff that we came up with in rehearsal, and then we'd have at least one or two takes where we completely went off the script and just flew by the seat of our pants.

I'll give you my worst nightmare. I'm dreaming that I'm onstage, the curtain goes up, and I have no idea what my lines are or what's going on. I think I should know, I kind of know, I remember rehearsing... and the audience is there waiting.

It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.

I always check my harness before I do a stunt; I test-drive the cars I have to race or explode; I'm present at all pyrotechnical rehearsals; and I walk through everything step-by-step. No man should put their life in someone else's hands unless they have covered their own safety from all angles.

In Chicago, I walked in knowing what the dancers were going to need.

I love, love, love live performance. It's like walking a tightrope without the net. You better be on point; you better be balanced. You better have rehearsed it and seen it from every vantage so you can do what you do best. I do love film because it's up front in your face, and hopefully you've got a great editor.

The only thing I do for everything is read the script a billion times, back to front, every single bit.

Learning lines is bloody boring.