Audience Quotations

The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience's eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker I know is speaking clearly to the audience 'right now.'

I feel that 'Person of Interest' is the same quality as 'Brotherhood.' I think it's one of the smartest network television shows on the air today. The audience is a wide range of individuals.

The film opens up the world beyond Katniss' point of view, allowing the audience access to the happenings of places like the Hunger Games control room and President Snow's rose garden, thereby adding a new dimension to the story.

I always like to have faith that an audience will suspend their disbelief, if you present it to them in the right way. I find it peculiar when people scoff at one bold idea, and yet they'll then turn over and watch a man travel through time in a police phone box. I think it's just how you present the idea.

Most of the time, as an artist, I can be self-indulgent, fulfilling my own impulses, embracing imagery that contains poetry on my own terms, without immediate regard to an audience or the particular placement of my finished work.

'Deity' will be a compelling and exciting thriller with complex and interesting characters. A neo-realistic style to story and images will take the audience deep into Calcutta's many different levels. A fascinating clash between American and Indian culture.

The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile.

My goal is that after seeing 'Grand Canyon,' every person in the audience will go home knowing they have to conserve water: even something as simple as installing a low-flow toilet or showerhead, or turning off the faucet while they're brushing their teeth.

To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.

In the writing of memoirs, as in the production of shows, too much caution causes the audience to nod and think of other channels.

If you really don't care what an audience thinks, make a home movie and show it on your wall.

I always figured there would be a kid audience and an adult audience, and there is. That's true for 'Hunger Games' and 'Twilight' and 'Harry Potter.' And 'Maximum Ride,' for sure. In particular what happens is a lot of parents share the books with their kids, and the mom has read it, and the kids, and they talk about it.

We constantly run lines together before every show too, and then there's a long, traditionally long, story to tell the audience every show. Today, we're doing it twice.

Anyone who thinks they can write the perfect comedy that everyone will love is a fool. I can only write what I think is funny and hope that there is a likeminded audience out there.

It appeared as if I had invited the audience into the water with me, and it conveyed the sensation that being in there was absolutely delicious

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

I had no fear 'cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.

I don't know what an audience wants to see but I know what I like to see.

If you can handle a nightclub audience successfully, you can handle anything

I don't mind the audience identifying me with Red.

My ultimate aim would be to captivate an audience, even just for a second.

I hate when a movie just sort of ends and is so open-ended you feel like it wasn't finished. I appreciate leaving things up to the interpretation of the audience and letting them make decisions about where things will go in the future - but the director has to make a decision; otherwise it is sort of a cop-out.

People are used to seeing kids jump around. You know, the target audience, the audience that's spending money on music, like rock and hip-hop - they're used to seeing people get really physically involved in their music.

That taught me one lesson which is that you're naive to believe that bands can change the world. Bands are very naive to think that just if their audience thinks that they can change the world, that they can. That was quite a lesson for my career, really.

Being yourself is the most important element for me, because, if you're trying to be something you're not, the audience will pick up on that.

In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference between the skill of acting in movies and onstage.

'Halal in the Family' will expose a broad audience to some of the realities of being Muslim in America. By using satire, we will encourage people to reconsider their assumptions about Muslims, while providing a balm to those experiencing anti-Muslim bias. I also hope those Uncles and Aunties out there will crack a smile!

I think improvisation is a technique and a tool. I think that even the best of them fail most of the time, and in the end, the audience is not interested in how you got there but in what you're saying. The more clearly and concisely and artistically you say it, the more effective it is.

I'm proudest of the fact that I fell in step with an audience taste level that I knew how to judge and maybe deliver for, and consistently.

Today's audience knows more about what's on television than what's in life.

It's the adrenaline rush you only get from being in front of an audience. It's addictive.

I'm trying to sell every audience something; that something is me.

In all the great periods of the drama perfect freedom of choice and subject, perfect freedom of individual treatment, and an audience eager to give itself to sympathetic listening, even if instruction be involved, have brought the great results.

All video games are games, obviously. They're designed. They're digital. They have rules; they give an audience some type of vicarious experience.

By laughing at me, the audience really laughs at themselves, and realizing they have done this gives them sort of a spiritual second wind for going back into the battles of life.

I feel like what I owe my audience is what I'm most passionate about.

Don't dumb it down. The audience is smart and gets what you are doing.

If it is something that I want to do, then I don't think the audience will hate it. Unless I turn into a megalomaniac and start thinking that Salman Khan can do anything.

If you want to talk about a subject that is important to women, romantic fiction is the place to talk about it because that's where your audience is.

I come from a theater background, and if you're doing a play, your audience is right there, and you're able to have that one-on-one experience. Doing more TV now, when fans come up to me on the street and talk to me on social media, that's a way to bridge that gap.

I think about my audience when I write, to some extent. Thinking of writing for young adults, I try to keep the stories moving, never a dull moment, to hold their interest.

I let the audience use their imaginations. Can I help it if they misconstrue my suggestions?

The mass audience doesn't want to see you if you aren't perfect. If you don't look a certain way, if you don't have big pecs and great skin and the perfect eyes. And it's unfortunate, because kids are growing up with body image dysmorphia because not everyone is represented on the screen.

It is amazing that something I did 23 years ago still has an audience that people respond to and I am touched and surprised that people are still very positive about.

When I visit schools, I try to reach kids who perhaps don't have books at home or aren't that keen on reading. Somehow you draw them in with the pictures and then perhaps they'll want to learn more about it. I use a lot of audience participation and find kids who aren't really part of it and try to include them - to draw in those reluctant readers.

Ever since I gave up therapy, it's my only time with a captive audience.

You have to respect your audience. Without them, you're essentially standing alone, singing to yourself.

Audiences can be leery of sequels; the studios make a hit, they see dollar signs, and they make a cheap rip-off.

George Carlin maintained that anything and everything is funny given the right context. This context also includes your own history with a given group. What I can get away with and where I can go is not a problem with my audience because they know me.

I've seen the power of the community. A young person can stand up, talk about his dream, and someone from the audience will come forth to help him make that dream come true. Great things can happen when you place the right ideas before the right audience!

I believe that there's good content or bad content. You see interviews when somebody interviews a director of a movie that didn't perform well in the box office, and he says, 'The audience didn't understand my movie.' If people didn't go to buy the ticket, then you did the wrong movie.

'Survivor' was, to me, an absolute reaction that the audience was having to the sort of staid nature of narrative drama on television.

Sometimes it takes a while to find that perfect balance between knowing who you are, what your sound is, and building the right team to make that happen. Once it all really comes together and it makes sense, both for the audience and your fans, there's no stopping you.

I love when people laugh. I love when they cry, I like a story to say something, and I hope the audience feels happier leaving the theatre than when it came in.

Since we didn't use guns, we wanted to make sure we could earn the ability to win the audience over by making it believable. A lot of what you do when you work out in that mode is use your mental energy.

Can you design a Rorschach test that's going to make everyone feel something every time - and that looks like a Rorschach test? It's easy to show a picture of a kitten or a car accident. The question is, how abstract can you get and still get the audience to feel something when they don't know what's happening to them?

A show can be artistically successful; a show can be financially successful; a show can be successful by the transformative experience the audience is having; a show can be successful from the point of view of what is experienced by the cast and the company on a daily basis.

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.

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.

On the stage, you have to find truth, even if you have to lose the audience.

We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.

Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning.

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.

It's new and different every night. The charge you get from a good audience is like nothing else.

I have the audience I deserve. Or at least I have the audience that represents the kind of people that I like.

If your audience is young, it'd be youth culture, if your audience is older, it'd be older people, if it were senior citizens, it'd be senior citizen issues. So you try and hit the target audience.

You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.

If the audience doesn't like it, usually they're just silent. But they've never all walked out at once.

If you've ever noticed, beauty pageants are a lot like county fairs. The farmers show the cows the same way. They walk their prized Jersey cow across a stage in front of an audience with judges, and maybe the cow even twirls around a couple of times. Then the winning cow gets a satin ribbon draped over it, which has the title and the year on it.

In the late '70s I was asked to sing for the first time in Germany. I'll never forget it. It was at a festival in Bremen. The German audience went berserk and the reviews were a phenomenon. For some reason the German audience understood how technically challenging this music was; it wasn't just someone yelling their head off.

'Family Ties' was a very successful situation comedy. And, in almost every respect, it functioned on a day to day basis like a well-run, well conditioned basketball team. The show was performed live each week in front of a studio audience on Friday night.

The Russian male audience, they loved 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door,' and they like my comedies, but the Russian male audience is action, action, action.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well!

When we were trying to get the money for Driving Miss Daisy, everyone kept saying no one could direct it well enough to entertain an audience for 100 minutes essentially watching three people chatting in the kitchen.

I don't like telling people where I stand on this, although I'm surprised anybody wonders. I suppose if I say I'm pro-choice, if I make that clear, it let's the audience off the hook, then they can sort of relax. Okay, it's alright he's pro-choice then I can enjoy this.

There may be people in my audience who may not agree with me on some particular issue - you know, say, as a gun owner, they may not agree with me, or, you know, someone may not agree with me on a gay marriage topic. Any of those things. But those shouldn't be the reasons you listen to my music.

I think that one of the nice things about the Yellow Submarine movie is that it seems to be perennial. People enjoy watching from each generation. And it was like the Beatles themselves. You know the Beatles seem to find new audience each time another generation comes along.

At the end of Season 1 of 'Cheers', it was the lowest rated show in all of network television... So we turn to 'Bill Cosby'; when he came to Thursday night, he just exploded. And once the audience was there, we said, 'Hey, by the way, we also have this other great show. It's called 'Cheers'.'

Film and theater are about misdirection and making the audience see something. I find it interesting. One of the things we do in 'True Blood' is shoot all of our stunts in camera. Instead of doing some kind of visual effect, we try to make it happen.

If the only people we seek to impress are within our own ivory towers of artistic excellence or our hallowed institutions, we will find the audience is gone in 20 to 30 years. I find as I keep a broader audience in mind, I choose to sing and say more things I actually want to share and fewer things just for the sake of impressing others.

It's important for us to certainly cast some Christian actors who can speak to our audience when we market the films, but obviously we don't discriminate. So our crew and our cast, the beliefs don't really matter.

The thrill of performing - that's something that hasn't changed for me. That simultaneous joy of creating something and sharing it with an audience - it's the same now as it was then, when it was just my cousins' birthday party.

I suppose, in a way, one could say I may be less interested in my career than the audience is. Not to mean that I'm disinterested in my career, but I don't see it in terms of one stepping stone or, 'Now I'm going to go into my blue phase,' or what have you.

I've developed an audience over the years and I don't want to loose them.

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.

When you're a performer, you have to please a large audience. And when you're in politics, you have to please a large audience, too.

I do this acting thing mostly for myself. I like to make a connection and communicate with the audience to make myself feel less lonely. I also do it to develop my own character, so sometimes I do it to just be away in a certain area that I've never been to. But mostly, the story has to do something for me.

I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual.

On the monetization front, our strengthening leadership in internet user base and broadening reach of our platform have already positioned us as a must-buy platform in online video for brand advertisers to reach a nationwide audience within China.

Westerns are very difficult to predict whether they'll reach an audience or not.

Even if the play is great, every day in theatre you have to question everything because the audience is new every day. I love that.

It's absurd: half the movie audience are women, but Hollywood bosses are still aiming for men who are 20.

You have to think about why you're asking an audience to come to the theater. It's not that they should come because it's good for them, because it's the vegetables that they should eat and the culture shot that they should get... It's about experience and building community and catalyzing dialogue and bringing people together.

My music was never considered cool, but I've always felt that connection with the audience.

When the movie's on, I usually watch more of the audience.

It's those moments, those odd moments that you look for and sometimes by creating this kind of loose atmosphere you find those little moments that somehow mean a lot to an audience when they really register right.

If you respect the audience enough, they can take onboard many things.

When I was younger, I wanted to own a circus and create this bizarre revue that went from town to town. And, I was interested in set design and doing theater. And then, I was painting for a while. It was all circling around creating an intense experience for an audience of one, or an audience of many.

When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.