Lola Kirke Quotes

What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.

Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene.

Originally what I used to love was being on a stage and reacting to a live audience and maybe my calling is more in theatre.

Theater is such a different ballgame than film. And that's really why I stayed in film, because I really love the reality of connecting with your own feelings, and really putting that across in a realistic way. In film, the smallest muscular movements in your face, that are produced just by sheer feelings, you're not controlling them in anyway, can be seen by people in the audience because your face is sometimes, frighteningly, 40 feet wide!

I think every show I do, whether I am doing eight shows a week of a Broadway show... I think, "that's a show I'll never get back"... I go home at night and I think to myself, "that was my favorite".

When you're doing a play, you're onstage, there's no stopping or starting, there's no stopping to reposition for the camera or have a check done. You're there 'till the end of the show. What that gives you is a great gift, which is to command the audience, and you get to play with your script and your fellow actors. Every night, it's different. Hopefully it goes well and you get a great response. But the technique that you have to have on film or television is so delicate. It's fine-tuning. That is very different from being onstage, but they both have important skill sets.

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

In the theater, you go from point A to point Z, building your performance as the evening progresses. You have to relinquish that control on a film.

I love performing in front of an audience and seeing smiles on the kids' faces.

I would love to do more on the stage; having actual contact with the audience is great. You can give them a good seeing to!

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

In theater, the wellspring of the character comes from the doing of it, like a trial by fire, but in front of an audience.

I like working on stage because there's something very immediate about it, that interaction with an audience where you immediately hear their reaction, or feel them, whether they're with you.

When you are performing in theater, you feel so connected to your audience. It's exhilarating!

'Endgame' resists narrative and even thematic explanation. How you play it has to reflect this. If you decide something too much in advance, you forget the element that gives the play life - the audience.

I'm always happy and most at home on the stage. I love film and television, but I love live performance... your immediacy with the audience, it makes all the difference in the world.

Acting on stage is a living organism you can never pin down, and I believe the audience feeds off that, too.

For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

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'm not trying to take anything away from film acting, because it's also really hard, and I worship the people who are great at it. But to actually have to go out on stage night after night and do it with your audience right there is so wild and scary and exciting and fun and all the things that I remember loving about it.

From the moment I saw 'Camelot' as a kid, the organic inclination of performing before a live audience is raw and visceral. Once you're out there, there's no yelling 'Cut!' or any such thing as a do-over because that moment has passed, and you're in it as it's happened and gone, sharing it with everyone.

Doing my Broadway show '700 Sundays' reminded me how much I love working in front of an audience.