Performance Context Quotes

I guess I do prefer a ball cap. I have performed without a cap, mostly at funerals and weddings.

I suppose in some ways doing some of the songs in the show felt a bit like I was doing cover versions. I was covering myself. Not that they didn't feel like my songs, but the way I was approaching them was from a place so outside where they were written. The fact that these songs were in the context of a live show was a new thing.

I always take the audience into account.

For me, it’s like playing the same instrument but in a different context. TV work – it’s really about getting it just right. You have a chance to try again if it’s not. Theatre is like playing a rock show. It doesn’t really matter if you make a tiny mistake. It’s the whole vibe and getting people to feel you. It’s about carrying the moment through all the way with you in an hour and 20 minutes of the narrative.

I hope you came out to hear some bluegrass music. If you didn't, we're both in the wrong place.

Each performance and each film is what it is. It's right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.

If I'm doing a show on Sunday at 7 P.M., that wouldn't be the same show that I'd do at 11 P.M. on a Saturday - it's a different room at a different time of day with different sensibilities. That doesn't mean you have to compromise your art, but it is communication: you have to know how to talk to people.

I come from the performance world, but the idea of a worship song is different. It's useful music.

I change the language with which I use my voice. In opera, I know I have an orchestra behind me; I have to communicate to people very far from me.

Only in a concert situation do I have access to people directly to preach to them, and I don't believe that the bigger your platform is, the more people will pay attention.

There are great players who go unnoticed because they're not on the best teams.

Success in football is relative. If you take a job at a school that finished with a 1-9 record the year before, you're considered a good coach if you finish 5-5 in your first season. But what happens if you start with 8-2 or 9-1?

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

Pavarotti is not judged on how he sings in the shower. People wait until he gets on stage.

When you do music concerts at Taj Mahal and the Acropolis, you have to be careful about your performance being appropriate with the place that surrounds you. It has to be appropriate to the culture - it should fit the building behind you, the environment you are playing it in and the culture of that place.

Auditioning and actually acting on a set are two different things. When you audition, you're in a room and you don't have anything to play with and you don't have anything physically in the room. Whereas on set, you have direction, you have costumes, and you have other actors to work with. It's a completely different thing.

Yes, I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.

The thing I like about 'Nashville,' it just happens to be about musicians, and all the music is practical, meaning it's performed at a concert or during a rehearsal.

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.

Same job, whether it's comedy or drama. Regardless of the weight of the role, I feel like the job is always kind of the same. Who is this person? What's this guy here, and how is he playing with this thing, and what's he trying to say? And what's the volley with all these other people around him?

As for basic jokes about sex and even my religious stuff, I don't find any problems with that, even if I'm gigging in the Bible Belt, because religious people don't come and see me.

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.

I knew 'Be Our Guest' would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything.

There's some connection between visual images and music. But there's plenty of old records where I have no idea what the band looked like, or even what sort of context the music was played in.