It’s not whether you really cry. It’s whether the audience thinks you are crying.
Audience Quotes
I remember being asked to address a state association meeting of funeral home directors. Now, that is a unique group of people. As I entered the auditorium, it was evident the evening was intended to be a formal and possibly ‘dead’ affair. Everyone was dressed in black-and-white formal attire. I stood there wondering what my […]
In the theater the audience wants to be surprised but by things that they expect.
There is now a vast crowd that is a permanent audience waiting to be amused, cash customers screaming for their money’s worth, all fixed in a consumer’s attitude. They look on at more and more, and join in less and less.
The audience is fifty percent of the performance.
As with most audiences when there is a live celebrity on stage, our laughter is performative, disproportionate, and noncontextual: a semaphoric ass kiss across the footlights. Here we are, famous person! We get you!
The square people think I’m too hip, and the hip people think I’m too square.
An audience is like a broad. If you’re indifferent, Endsville.
(A woman cornered him and said in a treacly, gushing voice: “Doesn’t it thrill you, Mr. Churchill, to know that every time you make a speech the hall is packed to overflowing?”) “It is quite flattering,” Mr. Churchill replied, “but whenever I feel this way I always remember that if instead of making a political […]
When Dr. Edith Sitwell and her brother, Sir Osbert Sitwell, were in Hollywood, they gave a reading of their poems. Sir Osbert suddenly turned to the audience and asked: “Can you hear me?” One man answered: “No.” Sir Osbert replied: “Then pay a little more attention.”
