A Quote by Matt Besser

In most specials, the performer's up - not only not surrounded, but up on a stage - and there's a distance between them and the audience, and I think my comedy doesn't work as well in that way.
I think as a performer, it can be really great to stand on stage, especially when you have more time, but I do think about the specific people in the audience, how it's hard for them to get up and go to the bathroom, how they chose not to do other things that night and have turned off their phones and everything. So for that reason, I think it's necessary to mix it up and talk to the audience.
I hate to work with another performer who reads cards. The most guilty are the people who do only a few specials a year. You'd think with so few shows they could leam the lines.
I think I'm known mostly for comedy because most of the work I've done is comedy and that is in turn because most of the work that is offered to me is comedy, so I end up doing more comic roles and therefore being known for them.
I feel that in-person contact with people is the most important thing in comedy. While I'm up on stage, I can actually put myself into the audience and adjust my pace and tuning to them. I can get into their heads through their ears and through their eyes. Only through this total communication can I really achieve what I'm trying to do.
I'm like the Hulk on stage. It's way over the top. That's Bizarro Chris. Sometimes I get off stage and go What did I say?! I'll watch one of my stand-up specials a year later and go Eww, that was mean.
Most of the time, my favorite drama has comedy in it as well. I think most good dramas have comedy in there. And all of the dramatic actors I look up to are also very funny.
What I love about comedy is breaking down the barrier between the audience and the performer.
For me, stand-up comedy is a conversation between me and the audience. I have to keep them listening. When I'm making jokes about cake for twenty minutes, I have to make sure my audience is interested and following where I'm going.
The close-up says everything, it's then that an actor's learned, rehearsed behavior becomes most obvious to an audience and chips away, unconsciously, at its experience of reality. In a close-up, the audience is only inches away, and your face becomes the stage.
When you talk about the exchange of energy between performer and audience and audience and performer, I hope that I'm one of the best.
The difference when I'm writing a story versus writing a joke is that writing a joke is so much more about the structure and it's less about the conversation. To me, the thing that I love about stand-up is the intimacy between performer and audience.To get it even more conversational was something that really appealed to me and that I really enjoyed doing. My early experiments with it, with just telling a story from my life on stage, it was so satisfying to do. And seemingly for the audience as well. It's a different thing, and it's a different feeling and a different vibe.
Self-awareness is a character trait that's horrible to have if you're a performer. I think that a lot of these performers that we see get up on stage and play music, there's a sense of them truly not caring how they're coming across. They are just themselves. I look up to a lot of people who are like that.
As an ex-stand up, I can tell you that a comedy club isn't a place you go looking to get the abuse you just can't seem to find in daily life. The stage is a performer's domain. You protect that domain. You are not on stage to take what's given just 'cause you're getting paid. If you are attacked, you retaliate.
When a performer goes out on a stage, they may feel the audience is judging every aspect of them and their life. In fact, all that poor audience is doing is waiting to be entertained a little.
I loved George Carlin... I used to sit in front of the TV and watch the HBO comedy specials. I loved those comedy specials.
Normally classical music is set up so you have professionals on a stage and a bunch of audience - it's us versus them. You spend your entire time as an audience member looking at the back of the conductor so you're already aware of a certain kind of hierarchy when you are there: there are people who can do it, who are on stage, and you aren't on stage so you can't do it. There's also a conductor who is telling the people who are onstage exactly what to do and when to do it and so you know that person is more important than the people on stage.
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