I love Tim Minchin, Bill Bailey, and Hans Teeuwen, and I'm trying to synthesise elements of theatre into my show a little bit more.
Tim Minchin and Daniel Kitson are the two people that when I see them, I think I could never be that funny or that clever.
In my head, I have the most sensational singing voice. I perform concerts to thousands in the shower. The reality is I can hold a tune. The dream is a West End musical one day - no, really!
The first time I saw Tim Minchin live, it was his 2008 show 'Ready for This?' in a very big room at the Pleasance during the Edinburgh fringe.
When you love poor people THAT MUCH, when you love 'working people' THAT MUCH, that makes you the freest man/woman in the country." - Cornel West in explaining that Obama is A fulfillment of MLK's dream not THE fulfillment of MLK's dream
The one dream I have is to do a musical. I love singing, but most people don't know because I don't sell myself as a musical person. My dream is to play Audrey in 'Little Shop of Horrors' - it would be so interesting to have an Asian Audrey because it's all about achieving the American dream in a sinister, success-driven way.
I went to a performing arts school. I went to an audition for a musical, 'Les Miserables,' in the West End, and I got in, and my parents were like, 'Oh, you can sing?' So I kind of started singing properly when I was, like, seven.
I don't know what really makes a great musical or not. In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it.
In many ways, I think I'm a good person for it. I mean, I'm not a musical theater dude. Or rather, I don't watch everything, and love everything, and have every album. The ones that I love - like I've seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times. West Side Story I love. I love Singing in the Rain, I love White Christmas. I love the Dennis Potter ones like Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. I love Sondheim.
I signed up for the musical Tommy in the West End, where I met my husband.
I grew up in the West End, so my whole background was living among theatres and musicals and the West End's coffee bars and clubs. It's kind of obvious that one day I should do something like that.
I think my dream would have been to be a solo artist. But it didn't work out like that, and I also love to sing lots of musical stuff; I was really good at that, I've got a big voice. I dropped into musical theater and really enjoyed it and I sang for about nine years of my career.
A dream role is a role that you can't even picture for yourself. Everything I've ever played I never pictured I would get a chance to play. It [has] gone beyond my wildest dreams. One thing I would love to do in my lifetime is a movie musical. I've wanted to do that since I was a kid. That's what made me interested in acting in the first place. I would do any type of musical, but I love the Harlem Renaissance era. I think a dream role in something that I probably can't see and I don't know when it's going to come.
Human beings are like detectives. They love a mystery. They love going where the mystery pulls them. What we don't like is a mystery that's solved completely. It's a letdown. It always seems less than what we imagined when the mystery was present. The last scene in `Blow Up' is so perfect because you leave the theater still dreaming. Or the end of `Chinatown,' where the guy says `Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' It explains so much but it only gives you a dream of a bigger mystery. Like life. For me, I want to solve certain things but leave some room to dream.
I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.
I'm not really a big musical fan. I enjoyed 'West Side Story' when it came out, but it gets a bit tired in the end.