Quotes About Performance

My goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid - his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

Stephen Sondheim is calculus for actors. The words are witty and brilliant and profound but complicated.

I might've been witty, but I didn't have a shtick. So, I never considered myself a comedian.

A lot of comics fly by the seat of their pants, and they pride themselves on being witty, quick, and off-the-cuff. That's not my show. I wrote a show, and I want to do the show I wrote. I'm not interested in what the audience has to say.

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.

The first play I did was a funny one called 'The School for Wives', by Moliere. We were wearing the ugliest wigs and the worst costumes you can ever imagine to try to recreate 17th-century France in Singapore. But I got my first real pay cheque from that. I was very happy taking that cheque to the bank.

This is just rap. I'm not trying to make people think I'm some sort of scientific wizard or inspirational poet.

We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.

I went out of my way to make 'Immortal' sound perfect. 'Immortal,' 'Just What I Am,' and 'King Wizard,' those are perfect beats. Not a lot of people can perform on them. I say that meaning they're tailor-made for me.

I began acting on stage when I was 7 years old. My first role was as Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' at Chicago's Center on Deafness in Northbrook, Illinois.

I've been acting since I was 8 - I used to play hockey and there was a kids' theatre down the street from my house and one day I just walked in and signed up for auditions for 'The Wizard Of Oz.'

I played Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz.' That was my first role on stage.

I did the 'Wizard of Oz' in third grade, and I was a witch.

When I was a senior, I did my senior class play, and that was pretty much it... It was 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I was Dorothy.

I did my first show in second grade. I was a munchkin in 'The Wizard of Oz.'

If you want to see what stage comedians did to get laffs a century ago, watch the 1910 'Wizard of Oz.' I hope you have a high tolerance for pratfalls.

I've wanted to act since I was seven. The year before, I'd been a munchkin in 'The Wizard of Oz' and was overcome with terror. The next year I just watched. My sister was in 'The Little Mermaid' and I had this deep knowing that I needed to be there on stage, not in the audience.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They're always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel... when they're directing it at me. When they're including me.

I had a full 11/10, out of body of moment when I drove the Ferrari FXX K. That woke me up proper sideways.

My taste comes from when I was 12 years old and saw Genesis or Laurie Anderson or some performance artist who had put paint on himself. I've seen a lot of theater, but that's not what woke up my taste to become a director; nontheatrical things were much more theatrical than the theater I was seeing.

I got a part in a play in 10th grade, and that changed everything, woke up my love of theater.

Seeing Wolf Eyes for the first time - I was fifteen. I had this crazy feeling that this my generation's Stooges. I got infected by that energy.

Strangely, when I was a kid, my first acting job, at 5 years old, was a performance of 'The Three Little Pigs.' They cast me as the Big Bad Wolf.

'Johnny' was always a lone wolf when he got on stage. Him against the world, whereas suddenly, when I got into acting, people were relying on me.