Quotes About Performance

Talking about theater, actually, I built a little barn in upstate New York, and I call it 'the smallest theater in the world,' but it has a mini stage and a red velvet curtain.

We played Carnegie Hall, and that was one time where I felt... Carnegie Hall as a legendary, very venerable place to perform. I'd never heard of anyone going into the Hall and kind of standing on the seats and playing throughout the aisles and having the audience stand on the seats. So when we did that in 2013, even for me it was a shock.

I played Shylock in my school's staging of 'Merchant of Venice.'

There is more than enough 'Venom' to go around. Venom is a really huge character, and Hardy is an amazing actor, so there is plenty to mine just from Tom's performance, the character and the world he inhabits.

Audiences want comedy that has no venom. They want to have a laugh without it becoming twee.

I went into acting because I'm easily bored. Acting seemed to give vent to a lot of different feelings.

I was part of a metal and rock band, and I performed in front of 3000 to 4000 people for many years. I was the loudest mouth up there on stage. We would be screaming, head-banging and mass venting. We would all vent our feelings together, which is ideal as compared to participating in political and social forums, and I never felt any restrictions.

I love singing - singing was basically kind of my passion before ventriloquism.

My puppets are far more liberated than I am. Ventriloquism is a useful way of expressing myself.

I looked into studying psychoanalysis, wrote to the governing body and was about to start the year where they psychoanalyse you, four times a week, before you get to do it yourself. I just thought I'd taken the ventriloquism as far as I could. My act is so deconstructive, and I'd made all the monkey jokes anyone wanted to hear.

I think television defeats ventriloquism.

Ventriloquism today is in a slump.

It's strange because even in the vaudeville days, ventriloquists were never the main attraction. They were the guys brought out to stand in front of the curtain while sets were being changed. Ventriloquism wasn't even celebrated as an art until Edgar Bergen came along in the 1930s.

The magic in performing as an entertaining ventriloquist happens when the characters come to life and the interaction between the separate personalities on stage becomes 'real.' Then don't forget that the act has to be funny, and to me, being funny and entertaining any given audience is more important than anything.

The only way a ventriloquist speaks differently is that he forgoes using his or her lips, and learns to reproduce sounds using the tongue, upper palate, and teeth only. Those 'difficult' letters are B, F, M, P, V, W, and Y.

I do laugh when I hear myself saying, 'I am a ventriloquist.' I am definitely suited to it, though. I took it and ran with it quite hungrily. It is not for everyone, but it is just the chance to write for a character.

I started with Katie, a doll I got on eBay on my 10th birthday. I don't use her anymore. I've got a new Katie now, a real ventriloquist's puppet.

I think there's a lot of, unfortunately, unfunny ventriloquists out there, so they've got a bad rap. It came after Edgar Bergen because everybody had a little cheeky boy dummy like Charlie McCarthy, and everybody decided to become a ventriloquist because Bergen had popularized it. He brought it back from the doldrums of vaudeville.

Children are so used to seeing puppets that when they see a real ventriloquist they don't understand it.

Theater, especially musical theater, is a collaborative endeavor. The success of the venture is about the team.

Although I have been performing in all sorts of ways and roles since childhood, 'GoT' is my first proper venture onto the screen.

As performers grow older, I reckon there are two ways they can go. They can either be up there, playing more deeply from their guts than ever, or they can be phoning it in so crassly that it leaves a lump in your throat as you leave the venue at the end of the show.

The Tokyo Dome is a huge venue, so for us, its such a prestigious opportunity.

My shows aren't about trying to save some place, because I don't feel that's the right venue for it. That's my politics right there: Don't bring politics to my shows.