A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces. — © W. Somerset Maugham
The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
It's important to play the pieces that you feel you can play well. It was always my dream to play Bach - my first love and fascination - Chopin, and Szymanowski.
As an actor, the only thing we can do is play the truth at that moment. Because at any point in time if you play the future, or you play that you know something that the audience does not know, it kills the illusion of reality.
I never like to play for myself, and that is why I don't own a grand piano. To play for yourself is like looking at yourself in a mirror. I like to practice; that is to work at a task. But to play there must be an audience. New things happen when you play for an audience. You don't know what will occur. You make discoveries with the music, and it is always the first time. It is an exchange, a communion.
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.
Whether you are a writer or an actor or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.
Whether you are a writer, or an actor, or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That's what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.
Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.
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.
[J.F.Kennedy] is an iconic figure. And to make it even worse, he's a hero of mine. And every actor will tell you that you can't play heroes. And you can't play villains. You can only play human beings.
[on playing Walter] It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors and who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, and to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual. That's a gift to me, as an actor. It was like everything you could possibly hope for, over five years. So, I was a very lucky actor.
If we had an audience to play to, the performance would have gotten too big. Sizing our performances to the camera was an important journey for me at least.
Most of the time, I'll be conducting the orchestra, but there will be some pieces that I'll be playing an instrument as well, just because I love playing. There's pieces where I want to grab an instrument and play with the rest of the group, like 'The Light of the Seven,' for example; I would love to play the piano for that.
A sense of play is important when I'm writing, and so messing around with, say, a magic routine can feel like play, at least initially.
As an actor, it's important to feel for the character, as you will be watched by audience, and when you start feeling your character, you share a sense of happiness and achievement.
I feel like it's really important for an actor to play different roles so people can see, "Oh, he can play that guy or he can play this guy." You're not just "THAT guy," that cowboy guy, that whatever guy. Then you are limiting yourself.
?s long as I've got an audience out there to play for, I'm going to continue to play. I have at least enough people that I can go out on the road for 10, 11 weeks at a time.
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