Quotes About Stage

Being a growing entertainer, period, you're going to always have struggles. I'm still trying to learn how to even perform right onstage.

It was not easy for my mother, being a struggling actress and raising a child. We were these two sort of vagabonds, never knowing where the money was going to come from. She always says she couldn't afford a babysitter, which is why she put me on the stage.

I used to go to auditions, mainly for talent competitions like 'Opportunity Knocks.'

Before I walk onto the stage, it's about the centrality of Jesus and just really keeping a focus on Jesus as opposed to ourselves.

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

Yet the reality is that I'm a stage actor from the Midwest - probably the opposite of a shark agent.

I got to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, which is just so amazing. That stage is iconic; it was awesome being on it.

I get nervous playing the Opry still. You take that nervous energy and channel it into being amped.

I've played the Opry before.

The first role I played was Madame Ranevsky in 'The Cherry Orchard.'

You get more nervous in front of a lot of people. That's why, when you play a concerto, you play with a small orchestra, in some place where you don't feel that it is as important as Carnegie Hall.

On stage, I'm always nervous, but there is so much adrenalin, too. It's strange because I have to turn my back on the audience, and my audience is the orchestra. I communicate my energy to them, and they communicate it to the audience behind me!

I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural - never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.

You come across quite ordinary, nondescript people in daily life, and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage, too.

On stage, you have nothing to hide behind. It allows the work to live in a more organic place. It's almost like a meditation. You have to go on that stage and be as present as possible.

You hear some people saying, 'I'm alive on stage; it's where I feel most complete...' I don't understand that at all; I find that weird and depressing. I don't dislike the audience; it's just when I'm up there, they're in the darkness. There's just a sound of laughing or not. They're not 'people,' they're this big organism.

The fact that someone came forward and offered $1.25 million to make a movie was astonishing. We were also allowed to keep many of the original stage cast.

And for me I think I was originally a theater person, a producer/director/actor.

Anything back in New Orleans is definitely nostalgic. I really played my first shows of my life and learned to perform here. I learned how to work a stage and how to connect with a crowd. It all started here.

My first performance was as one of the orphans in 'Oliver!'

I had no idea that our love of fame was going to display itself in a high political office on a world stage.

Working outdoors in the Delacorte Theater is always challenging.

Personally, I loved our performance for the 2018 MAMA's. I loved our outfits and choreography.

In my stand-up, I generally improvise from an outline.