Quotes About Performance

He'd been given an assignment to write about teen beauty pageants ... which he'd accepted because he enjoyed blood sports as much as the next person.

If in opera the music impaired the verisimilitude of the acting, it is not less true that acting limited the variety of the music.

In the theatre the playwright is at least the equal partner of the performers, but in film the writer is shouldered aside by director, actor, producer and editor, who together transform the printed word into something far more glamorous and evocative.

Everything in my life revolves around people playing at being something.

Everything in my life revolves around people playing at being something. But that's only because we have to be that way in order to get on with our lives. Just because people are playing doesn't mean their hearts aren't in it.

In the theater there are players who can make a production out of eating an apple.

Acting is a form of confusion.

The author writes a play, then is through with it, aside from collecting royalties. Four weeks of rehearsing and the director's work is done. Theirs are creative jobs. But how would the author feel if he had to write the same play over each night for a year? Or the director to restage it before each performance? They'd be as balmy as Nijinsky in a week. Even the ushers traffic with different people every night. But the actress? She's a caged parrot.

I've played Private Lives everywhere except underwater.

Acting is the laziest of the professions. A ballet dancer must limber up two or three hours a day, working or idle. The great musicians practice three or four hours a day, willy-nilly. Opera singers must go easy on cigarettes, learn half a dozen languages. The demands on an actress consist in learning the role, interpreting to the best of her ability the intent of the author as outlined by the director. When not on stage? She sits around chewing her nails, waiting for the telephone to ring.

Rarely offstage, rarely on hiatus, Fiddler on the Roof has already been back on Broadway for four revivals, played London's West End four times, and remains among Broadway's longest-running shows ever.

In government we have leaders who are perceived by and large as unable to do what they are supposed to do, to lead. In business we have leaders who are perceived by and large as able to do what they are supposed to do, to lead, but who nevertheless do so in ways that disappoint and dishearten.

He took one long slow breath: crossed right hand over left upon his breast: became like a piece of a pageant; and responded "I will."

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.

eliminate the self'. 'The player needs to be able to forget about himself,' she writes. 'This is when real communication begins. For with the elimination of the self, he is able to reach the very core of the music, and is free to transmit it.

Whenever you are playing or singing music, and you notice you're in a trying state, stop trying, and focus your awareness on a single element of your movement at a time. Observe your body, and watch it subtly shift to a more relaxed and accurate kind of performance.

At the end of the day, it's a series of individual challenges played out against a team defense. It's a psersonal test every time I step into the batter's box: Can I do better than the last time? And that's why I love it.

In baseball, when you get into the batter's box, that's it. It's just you. It's one man against the world. All that matters in that moment is your individual achievement and your individual skill. There is literally nothing that anyone else on your team can do for you. Hell, they're all sitting on the bench, waiting to see what happens, just like the fans in the crowd! It's just you and your bat. And the ball.

There's only one drummer. We all travel to his beat. Well, I couldn't sing his song. Because for me, it wasn't a truthful statement. Well, Linda sang it, and it was a monster for her.

Dancing en pointe, or up on the toes, was not originally part of ballet. It came about in the early 1800s as a way of making the dancers appear lighter and more graceful. The

My gift is my song

So let it out and let it in Hey Jude, begin You're waiting for someone to perform with And don't you know that it's just you Hey Jude, you'll do

Monroe started to play again. The piano was warming up, the keys firm beneath his fingertips, the pedals amplifying or dampening, the melodies he played rising up from beneath the lid in curves and curls as if they were printed on the air like Braille.

It is a reality show... this show is never without drama.