Quotes About Performance

Travelling to different countries is a goal. I wouldn't mind playing huge places if we got an opportunity to, but it's nice to play small places too. Fish was saying yesterday that he doesn't ever want to play stadiums, or maybe he would once, he said.

But actually just yesterday we raised the key of one of my songs two steps up, so my voice is obviously responding. It's a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you use it right, the more you should get out of it. So yes, I sing.

Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they're full of muscle. 'Copacabana' sounds like it could have been released yesterday.

You can't just sort of come with, say, 'Yesterday,' or 'A Hard Day's Night,' and it be in the wrong place in the wrong show, and expect the song to work theatrically.

I think sometimes it's about just finding the measuring stick that's different than the one the world puts on you. It's finding the one in which you're held accountable and how you hold each other accountable; what a good job looks like in a particular situation and how to be better at your job than you were yesterday.

In heptathlon, if one day goes extremely well, you've got to go to bed and start the next one completely fresh - lose what you did yesterday.

The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile.

I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.

Sometimes the most excruciating experiences in rehearsals and performances yield the most beautiful work.

Great design alone isn't going to yield the results investors are expecting.

What this means is that the first week of every new series of ads will continue to yield softer results than you can expect to see in weeks two and three.

I want to do a character in a one-woman show who's a yoga teacher from the Bronx. I could do the best accent: 'Raise yaw ahms up! Reach faw da sky!'

Maybe the yoga I do helps me to play as much as I do. It certainly gets you in the right frame of mind, stretches and relaxes you.

At any Maroon 5 concert, you'll see a room backstage marked 'yoga.'

Playing a show before thousands of people is a highly unnatural state and when I get on the mat to do an hour of yoga before the show, I come out physically relaxed.

I don't have a gym membership. I usually do a bit of basic yoga or stretches at home or in my dressing room before the show. I've done plank for 60 seconds almost every day since 2009, when I had to wear a bikini onstage in 'South Pacific.'

Some acts are tricky. Eartha Kitt was tricky in a wonderful, old-style way. She did yoga on the piano and put her hands over her ears when the other acts were on.

When I was 25, I was in a show called 'Bajour,' and I was going to leave the show because I couldn't breathe. I couldn't sing, and I couldn't do the basic dance steps I had to do. Fortunately, two actors in the production - who were also yoga instructors - taught me some breathing exercises, and my asthma was cured that day.

I tend to do yoga before I go on stage, so that keeps me nice and calm.

Pilates and yoga, we always do those together. But I think it's a little bit easier for me, at 5-7, to be more flexible and to move a little better than him at 6-5.

Doing a show eight times a week is kind of like doing yoga or tai chi. A vinyasa is the same every single time you do it, but depending on how you're feeling, it tells you a lot about what's happening in your life.

I never miss yoga before a show.

With acting, I started very young, and I'd performed for a lot of children in boarding schools, late at night after the dormitory lights were out. I'd have a flashlight, and I'd be Count Dracula, or Shakespeare, or Yogi Bear, and leap from bunk to bunk. I loved the laughter; I liked the way it made people feel.

The key to doing eight shows a week is maintaining your energy. Getting as much sleep as possible and a big, healthy breakfast is the best way to make that happen. My mainstay is granola cereal, a banana, and soy milk. I also try to add a side of fresh fruit with yogurt and peanut butter toast.