“Don’t swap this raw sunshine for too much stage light.”
Woody Guthrie
more infosource: Anna Cononi, Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter, via www.woodyguthrie.org
category: performance, stage, sun
medium: Quotation
“The whole time I’ve been building my audience I’ve also been trying to unbuild the walls that come with having an audience, with having power. The whole point is to be able to feel more, to connect more, and yet in some ways having power runs at cross-purposes to this. Maybe I feel more just by sitting with a friend. And can I make a career, as a filmmaker and performer, that makes this sitting-with-a-friend feeling more possible, for each member of the audience and for myself? Yes! I say yes.”
Miranda July
more infosource: “Miranda July,” interviewed by Rachel Kushner, BOMB magazine, Issue 92, Summer 2005.
category: audience, connection, film, performance
medium: Interview
“I have been performing a long time, and I can tell when the audience’s attention is straying. I do not need a note.”
Steve Martin
more infosource: “The Art of Interruption,” The New York Times, December 4, 2010.
category: etiquette, interruption, performance
medium: Op-Ed
notes: Steve Martin wrote this Op-Ed (worth reading) in response to audience complaints at an event he took part in—an on-stage conversation with the art critic Deborah Solomon—at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. The conversation focused on art, not his career, and the audience thought it was boring. The Y offered refunds to its patrons. A few days after the event, Martin tweeted: "I am offering to erase my signature from signed books at 92nd St. Y."
performance