Performer-Audience Relationship Quotes

I like my audience. I always feel when up on stage performing that I could enjoy having a cup of coffee with any one of them.

I began to go to concerts when I was 12 years old. And I would stand there, the small imp that I was, and I would expect the world to be laid before me by these artists, and in some cases it was. So when I climbed onto the stage, I always imagined that I was singing to somebody who was similar to how I had been.

Our lives are entwined with the people over the footlights. We are a part of them.

Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience.

I'm the audience first, and if you're gonna be a great performer, you need to be a great audience. So, I do music for me first, and whoever likes it likes it, and whoever doesn't -- well, it's just not for them.

Yeah, people do need to realize that just because they've seen me perform for an hour does not mean that we are now close.

No matter what, I will always prefer a live performance. Whether it be a play or a musical, or playing music live. As long as it's live, it's the best because there's sort of an immediacy to connection between an audience and a performer, whereas where you do film or television, you're at the whim of so many different forces.

There was a point in the '80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that - were I not on the stage - they'd sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir.

At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audience is looking down at the stage. Everybody in the business knows: Up for singers, down for comics. The people want to idealize a singer. They want to feel superior to a comic. You're trying to make them laugh. They can't laugh at someone they're looking up to.

Music is a communication. It's a two-way street. You need people to play to in order to make that connection complete. That's the way we look at it.

Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.

As an actor, early on, you learn that the audience is never wrong. And if you think they are wrong, you need to find a different way to make a living. Collectively the audience is smarter than you will ever, ever be.

The personal boundaries, I think for comedians they're a little bit different anyway, but I think people - feel free to do stuff - It's interesting with comedians because when we walk on stage, oftentimes we're talking about ourselves for an hour and we're talking about very intimate details, so after hearing us for an hour, a lot of people feel very comfortable with us because they feel like they know us and they're our friends because we just told them our innermost secrets and details of our lives for an hour. What they forget is we know absolutely nothing about the audience.

If you get too heavy with the nods and winks, people get a sense that they're excluded from something. If they're in screenings and everyone's laughing, and they don't know what the hell it's about, somehow you feel excluded from the party, or like you're not in the inner circle. As a performer, that's the worst thing you can do to an audience. It's fun, but you have to be very careful with it.

Performance is always oriented towards a spectator, towards an imagined audience and I was thinking who is their imagined audience?