Creative Performance Quotes

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.

When I direct - everything I've directed has had improv in it, because I think there's something special in a performance the first time it's said out loud that's hard to recreate.

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

I love an actor who comes in, ready to work. It's like a good tennis player. They hit the ball where you don't expect it, and it's great.

The sport is called artistic gymnastics. So you do have to be a little bit of an actress.

My whole background is character acting: weird costumes, fat suits, playing men, playing animals - I've never played anyone with whom there's any overlapping Venn diagram.

I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you're improvising something that's dramatic, there's not that much to be good at.

The best of pop in our country is among the best of the arts that we do. And Britain does the arts as well as, and sometimes better than, anybody else on the planet.

I'm not a writer, inherently. Most of the writers I've met have stories they need to tell. I don't have that. I'm an interpreter. I like getting a script, seeing a character and thinking, "Oh, wow, I know what I can do with that."

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals, but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.

If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people's songs, you're asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it's a song they know very well.

I did things with the microphone stand that no-one else has attempted to do.

I'd love to do something where I played a musician.

When I use music on stage, the prime directive is to entertain the public, so it is different.

I was actually the head of the violin after-school club. And then I was also the head of the dance club, the popping club. So one day, just by coincidence, we had to hold the two clubs at the same time. I had to go back and forth. And that's when the idea came up for dancing and playing violin at the same time.

Live shows have been going on for so long, can you really do something that's never been done before?

I think the secret of great acting is that you have to bring your imagination to the party. You have to have a great imagination and you have to bring it every day when you're working. Your imagination and your skills as an actor are what see you through, not what you're wearing or where you are.

A lot of lines in movies were written, but I'm always improvising. Once you get into the scene, it just comes to me.

I'm sure any vocal teacher that listens to me would rather cut my throat than do anything - I do everything all wrong - but I think for me that's the best - because I don't think I have a voice so I think what I project would be style - if I learned to sing I'd lose my style.

I definitely try to go above and beyond with live mixing and scratching.

I sing in many different colors and, hopefully, they add up to a great performance that, after you leave the theater, makes you feel like I've really shared something of myself.

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

I always wanted, and still aspire, to be something more than just one thing, just one performance.

When you do improv, you're everything. You're a performer, writer, and director, because you're moving the scene in the direction you want it to go, you're making it up as you go, and you're acting it.

No matter what you're doing, whether it's a makeup tutorial or an interview or a lip sync, performance is the essence of drag. It is gender performance. Being able to produce a performance is what a superstar has to do.