A Quote by Franklyn Ajaye

It's better to play to the host as though in a real conversation and let the audience listen in- which they are. — © Franklyn Ajaye
It's better to play to the host as though in a real conversation and let the audience listen in- which they are.
A talk show is difficult because the formula is always the same: there's a host and there's guests. Really what you can change is only so much. So, I don't have any pre-interviews, which forces real conversation.
I'm still learning about music. The best way to learn is to listen to the audience. When you listen to the audience, they will tell you what they like. I wish these big corporations, instead of telling the audience what they should have, would listen.
Even though standup seems like one-way conversation, if you're doing it right, it's actually a two-way discussion between the comic and the audience... the audience just happens to be communicating through laughter.
Every show I play, whether it's for an audience of 15,000 or 50, I look at it as a party, and I'm the host.
This conversation with the audience has been going on since, what, '72, '73... Sometimes it's like a conversation after dinner with friends. You're in a restaurant, and you got there at 8 o'clock. Suddenly, you realize it's midnight. Where did the time go? You're enjoying the conversation. It's sort of a natural, organic conversation.
We would like doctors to listen, but the fact is, we better be ready to be able to talk to them. You're going to have to be an active participant in that conversation, so I'd say the American people are going to need ways of stepping up to the conversation.
I don't photograph for other people. I love an audience, mind you. Once I've got them there, then I love an audience. Not a big audience, though. I'd rather please ten people I respect than ten million I don't. But I don't play to an audience, I do it for myself.
Performers should realize they not only have to prepare themselves for concert purposes as far as memorizing their programs goes, but for the business of just walking out before the people …. It is important to play before an imaginary audience too. Before I play in public I very often play a program three or four times as though I were seated before a actual audience.
What good is it if a guy can sing real good but he sits on his ass and doesn't make anybody feel anything? I can connect with an audience every time I play. When I sing, they listen.
The game is if the orchestra can hear each other, they play better. If they play better and there's a tangible feeling between the orchestra and the audience, if they feel each other, the audience responds and the orchestra feels it.
There was a lot that was tricky about playing with [Thelonious Monk]. It's a musical language where there's really no lyrics. It's something you feel and you're hearing. It's like an ongoing conversation. You really had to listen to this guy. Cause he could play the strangest tempos, and they could be very in-between tempos on some of those compositions. You really had to listen to his arrangements and the way he would play them. On his solos, you'd really have to listen good in there. You'd have to concentrate on what you were doing as well.
What I prefer is an audience who listen. And are intelligent. Which I try and assume every audience is. And that if something goes wrong, it's generally my fault and not theirs.
Visiting a new town is like having a conversation. Places ask questions of you just as searchingly as you question them. And, as in any conversation, it helps to listen with an open mind, so you can be led somewhere unexpected. The more you leave assumptions at home, I've found, the better you can hear whatever it is that a destination is trying to say to you.
Make it clear that though you are happy to do anything the host likes, you are also perfectly fine exploring or relaxing by yourself. Give your host his or her space.
A good play is a play which when acted upon the boards make an audience interested and pleased. A play that fails in this is a bad play.
I try to make all my work as honest as possible. I want the audience to feel like they're watching two people talking-having a conversation-as opposed to watching actors fake it. I want the audience to get lost in the fact that this is so good it could be real.
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