Lady Gregory Quotes

I grew up with music hall and revue and was used to filling in the little gaps here and there to get bigger audience reaction.

It never became an act in the sense of an act. It was always, no matter where we worked, little revues.

They were looking for actors - real actors - who could play instruments. There was a lot of improvisation and scene work involved in addition to the music. The auditions went on for a long time.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.

I've always loved projects where I can combine acting and music.

My mother worked in the old Minsky's troupe, which toured the country in the golden age of burlesque theatre.

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.

I come from a very vaudevillian family.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

Lyrics are my racket; music is play - the fluff stuff.

When you play, it's like you know that there are people out there who are hearing it for the first time, and I think that's really important.

Acting had been a hobby that turned into a career, the directing was a hobby that turned into a career and music just really allowed me to find another way to express myself.

I love musical theater so much. When done right, I think comedy songs can be the most efficient form of joke delivery. Songs can be the most efficient and the best forms of conveying emotion. Music is universal. It's worldwide.

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.

A Las Vegas show is all-round entertainment. Which means there's some singing, some dancing, some magic, some drama - everything is rolled into that one performance.

I started performing in 1950 at the age of 16 when I joined the Burton Lester's Midgets as a performer. Shortly after, I became a DJ with Mecca Organization before joining Billy Smart's Circus as a clown and shadow Ringmaster.

I always like to work with really good filmmakers and really good actors.

When I was starting out in this business, that was the norm. You did it all. You looked around, and entertainers could dance, sing, play the piano, act, make you laugh.

When movement isn't enough, you dance, or when speaking isn't enough, you sing. When it's organic, and it's earned like that in a musical, that's when it works, and then there's nothing like it because it's this thing that takes you to a whole 'nother level, you know?

Theater is my favorite platform. Television is my favorite paycheck. The more television I can do, the more theater I can do.

If we're karaoke-ing, I'm as likely to do Aerosmith as I am 'Sweeney Todd'.

I've always been a cabaret-vaudeville artist - an hourlong cabaret and a floor show in a hotel - somebody like that. That's my main forte.

My parents were in Vaudeville, in musical. And I would tour with them and had a couple of wonderfully lucky breaks in England.

I've always wanted to do a cabaret.

Once you're in a musical, there is a huge opportunity for that, singing and dancing, 'Aha!' and 'Tada' at the end of the numbers; but it's a different kind of discipline you have to go through to maintain that kind of performance.