Top 1200 Stage Performance Quotes & Sayings

Life is rather like acting lessons while you are on stage giving a public performance!

To this day, to this very day, except for television, I've never had a writer. Anything I've ever done on the stage, happened on the stage and I developed it from there. It started doing impressions and jokes - which I did very poorly. To this day I can't tell a joke. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I exaggerate it and it becomes a joke. Everything I've ever done I've done out on the stage and it became a performance over many many years.

During one performance of 'Les Miserables,' the barricade didn't leave the stage, so we had to actually end up finishing the second act with the barricades on the stage, which was very strange... doing the love scene on the barricade.

I love surprising people with a present or a gift or a stage performance or anything.

My first stage performance was when I was just four.

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.

[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.

I'm interested in doing anything and everything that I can to squeeze the creativity out of my brain. I guess I'm kind of a performance rat, that's what I want to do, I love being on stage if I'm not on a set. I just love putting creativity into a performance.

My stage fright gets worse at every performance. During the overture I hope for a theater fire, typhoon, revolution in the Pentagon.

I'm actually sometimes nervous right before a performance, but as soon as I'm on the stage I'm like, 'okay, we're gonna rock this baby.'

Evaluate every performance on: stage presence, concentration, delivery, material and lessons learned.

From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.

A video taped stage performance is just - you know, it's never gonna be the same as it is if you're sitting there live in the theatre.

I've tried every kind of bottled water, but Poland Spring is my go-to. I always have room-temperature bottles of it on side of stage for post-performance.

When we deal in generalities, we shall never succeed. When we deal in specifics, we shall rarely have a failure. When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates.

I had a really great performance with Steven Tyler in the movie 'Be Cool.' I performed 'Cryin',' so we recorded the song beforehand. But I didn't get to meet him until I hit the stage with him, and we had a live performance with 30,000 people in the audience, and that was for the movie.

Live performance is everything. First of all, I have terrible stage fright. But beyond that, once the music starts, it's OK.

At the end of every stage performance, the audience all applaud me for doing my job, but I have friends who work in offices who don't get that.

It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.

It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

I love the stage, it's my first love - but, it's gone. You do your performance, then it's a memory. It only lives in the moment.

I won the speech competition in class, and I always say this was my first 'spoken word performance.' It was the first time I got on stage and recited something. I fell in love with the stage at the age of 12.

We all get to choose where we set up the stage of our lives - before the Crowds, the Court, the Congregation, the Critics (inner or otherwise)-- or the Cross of Christ. All except One will assess your performance. Only One will accept you before your performance ... Only in Jesus is there 100% acceptance before even 1% performance.

I offer my performance as prayer for someone I've worked with as an actor or someone who has died. The image that comes into my head as I walk to the stage, I offer that performance up for that person.

You should make an effort on stage because it's a performance. The stage should be glittery and camp, but I don't go down the shops in full stage gear.

So many horses get stage fright when they enter the arena, and that's it - the performance is over.

I've worked with actors before where I was like, this is not working, and then I've seen their work on the screen and I've been like, Wow, that was a really great performance. Because there are a lot of elements with film. It's not like stage. It's not a kind of performance art anymore; it's a highly tuned kind of collaboration - a symphony.

Whenever I'm waiting behind the stage, it's kind of like my normal Jackie mode is me talking a lot, playing around, but superstar Jackie mode is me concentrating on making sure that this performance was going to be a great performance.

As far as the performance goes, I want to create an atmosphere, and use 5.1 sound and imagery and shape and form to transform the stage from one thing to another, as if you're watching a movie.

My take is that acting is acting. A performance is a performance. With performance capture, if you don't get the performance on the day, you can't enhance the performance.

There is really nothing like seeing a live stage performance.

I don't really unwind after a performance. I'm still pumped up and just want to get back on stage.

I treat every time I walk on the stage like it's the performance of my life.

Does the real thing ever have the perfection of a stage performance?

I get nervous every time, for every single performance, before getting up on that stage.

I'm like a prize fighter. When I'm not on stage, every action that I take has to be focused on my next performance.

To be honest, for me, my main workout is when I'm on stage. Even though I make pop music, I don't think I perform in the classic 'pop star' sort of way. I'm very active on stage; I always end up dripping in sweat afterwards. It's always like a full-on, wild performance, so that's pretty much like my exercise, I would say.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

The world of the stage and the performance on the stage usually does not tend to translate very well - it doesn't tend to hold very well - once cameras are on it; it's not like it's terrible or embarrassing or bad anything, but, I, as an actor, would perform a role differently for an audience than I would for just cameras.

During an early performance of 'Spamalot,' I left my regal gloves in the fridge to cool down and didn't remember them until I was on stage. They needed to be thawed overnight.

Nothing feels worse than having to break the stage down before the performance, and I mean nothing.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.

A stage play is beautiful only when it is seen as a stage play, just like you cannot get the same effect of a live Bharatanatyam performance in a recording.

I always saw law as a performance, just like being on a stage.

No matter what you're doing, whether it's a makeup tutorial or an interview or a lip sync, performance is the essence of drag. It is gender performance. Being able to produce a performance is what a superstar has to do.

Right before I go on stage, I'm absolutely terrified. My mind darts at many directions, but the center of me is going forward into the performance.

There is a remarkable nimbleness of style, a balancing act of tone, in Voltaire, which is hard to bring off on stage. When you speak the words out loud, the effect is very different from when you read them. So one needs to do something new with a stage performance, not simply 'tell the story'.

Stage performance is obviously a much grander sort of depiction. The audience isn't right in your face as close as a camera lens gets.

If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?

The thing that's characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage.

Growing up as a dancer, the stage is really where I love to be performance wise.

I've realized that the only thing I'm interested in is the performance. If the performance is right, then I'm happy. You offer up the dialogue and then the performance comes around.

The performance on the stage has its reasons in the performance induced in thousands of separate minds and this second performance is no less prodigious than the first.

Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.

I don't think I gave a good enough performance to be nominated for it. I thought I gave a fine performance, but those things are supposed to be about giving an extraordinary performance.

My first ever stage performance was in Edinburgh in 1960.

When you go on a stage - or even in a café or a room - and you play it's all happening right then and there: the exchange, the art, the communication. Performance is in the moment.