A Quote by William Shatner

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

William Shatner

Quote Topics

Actor Audience Aware Performing Stage

Quote Author

William Shatner
Canadian - Actor
Born: March 22, 1931

I still feel I belong to the theatre. There is nothing more challenging and exciting for an actor than performing before a live audience. The stage is the real testing ground for an actor.

Anupam Kher

I definitely love performing live because there are moments of spontaneity. And as much as you're performing on stage, I feel like the audience is performing, too.

Carrie Brownstein

The actor's physical type is the main consideration. It isn't and shouldn't be. Does the actor "look the part"? It is the simplest question to deal with. The director deludes himself who yields to the temptation to believe that an affirmative answer settles the matter. An actor's looks will impress an audience initially but after his first five minutes on stage it becomes aware of what he or she communicates (or fails to communicate) through acting!

Harold Clurman

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.

David Lang

Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.

Billy Crudup

The inner life of the [imagination], and not the personal and tiny experiential resources of the actor, should be elaborated on the stage and shown to the audience. This life is rich and revealing for the audience as well as for the actor himself.

Michael Chekhov

Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene.

Tom Riley

We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.

Wallace Shawn

The stage is my first love. It gives me immense self-satisfaction, a sort of power because a stage actor carries the audience along; it's a live performance; spontaneity is its soul.

Himani Shivpuri

If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.

Roger Rosenblatt

That's the thing about stage: It's something you can't find anywhere else. It's a two-and-a-half, three-hour experience, and it's a real relationship. You're sending out energy from the stage, but the audience is giving you back so much also, so that's also lifting you and pushing you forward as you're performing and giving you so much energy. You can't find it anywhere else, and that's why people get addicted to being on stage, and when they're not on stage are kind of looking for that and constantly searching for it.

Aaron Tveit

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.

Lyle Lovett

In comedy, beware the split focus. The audience should focus on the face of the actor. The audience must see the setup. If there is action elsewhere on the stage, the comic line can be lost.

James Carver

I never dreamed that I would hear 10,000 people screaming when I stepped out onto a stage. Well, that's not entirely true. I dreamed about it but in a performing-on-the-stage-at-Staples-Center-or-Madison-Square-Garden context. But never in a I'm-in-a-movie-that-hasn't-even-come-out-yet one.

Jacqueline Emerson

I put my life in danger every time I do some of these demonstrations, whether it's in the audience hanging upside down or on the stage. We now have a lot of dangerous stunts where anything can go wrong. In fact, I have fallen two stories and landed on the stage, so I am well aware of the dangers.