I was singing in a mall, and I picked a girl to come up onstage with me. As I was grabbing her hand, I fell off the stage. It felt like I was in the air forever, flying like Superman.
Aaron Carter
Coming from a background of being onstage, you're onstage for two and a half hours and you're in it for the whole time no matter what you're doing. Even if you don't have a line, you have to stay in it.
Aaron Tveit
Being onstage is just a feeling that you cannot duplicate anywhere else because the energy that the audience is giving you forces you to give more energy. It's such an output and exchange of energy. You can't do that anywhere else.
No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn't be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes.
Adam Conover
I've been singing properly every day since I was about fifteen or sixteen, and I have never had any problems with my voice, ever. I've had a sore throat here and there, had a cold and sung through it, but that day it just went while I was onstage in Paris during a radio show. It was literally like someone had pulled a curtain over it.
Adele
People buy a ticket to see your show, so from the moment I get onstage, I can have no insecurities, because they're already there. You have to get people to listen. If they listen, everything's cool.
Afrojack
I can't play the guitar, so the thoughts of playing one onstage at a festival makes me quiver, but I've been blabbering away in front of people since I was a child, so talking for a living isn't the most daunting thing to do.
Aisling Bea
By high school, I was telling everyone, 'Oh, I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up,' because my dad was always saying to me, 'Pick a career path where you're always going to be necessary.' But by junior year, I was president of choir, I was the lead in the school play, and I just loved being onstage performing.
Aja Naomi King
I've been performing since I was a child; my mother would have to pull me aside and tell me that I wasn't onstage. I was a cheerleader, president of choir, and in the school play.
More live recording. I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live because things happen onstage that don't happen in the studio.
Al Jarreau
I don't really move onstage; all I do is just gradually hunch more and more and jut out at the people in the front row.
Al Madrigal
I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?
Al Pacino
I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.
Alan Alda
We played in Texas about a year ago, at Emo's, the famous country and western club in Austin. And I figured, well, if I'm finally gonna die onstage, that's where it's going to be!
Alan Vega
I couldn't be touring unless my husband was on the road with me, taking care of our son while I'm onstage and doing interviews.
Alanis Morissette
I'm not a huge dancer onstage. In fact, I like not moving at all if I don't have to. But even just standing up for any given amount of time in 6-inch heels ends up leaving me feeling like I've been cracked in half like a rag doll after a few shows.
Alaska
My idea was you can't dress for the stage, you have to dress all the time like you're onstage. And so I would just always wear suits or some form of it. I wanted people to know I played music. That was kind of how you would find other people: you would just walk around looking a certain way and end up meeting someone who liked the way you look.
Albert Hammond, Jr.
When I get onstage in a play, I feel very safe, very protected, very fulfilled.
Alec Baldwin
I love experimenting with clothes for photo shoots, but when I'm onstage, I want to show people that there are other options. You can just be yourself and still make good music.
Alessia Cara
It took me a long time to be alright with smiling onstage.
Alex Ebert
There's a character that I play onstage, and I can't let him loose in the supermarket when I'm buying my beans on toast.
I don't want to be 70 years old jumping around onstage.
I'm too scared to perform onstage. I'm not very good with big crowds.
You study all your life, you work really hard to do your best work onstage and onscreen, and then you make your best money playing an ant.
It's nice to be able to show how we are like in person and give a peek behind the curtain with 'Total Divas.' That's been my biggest feedback is how different than I am behind the scenes than I am onstage.
Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying 'yes and' to other people's ideas, making statements.
The minute you step onstage, you get eight feet taller.
I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage - sometimes I don't even want to go on. But once I'm onstage I'm fine.
I'm not saying I'll never go solo - never is a long time - but I've always been onstage with someone else. That way, you're in it together, and you can feel, together, when the songs are right.
If I acted like I did onstage in normal life, everyone would probably hate me.
For some reason, people don't want to see a girl onstage. Whether it's a girl or a guy, if you like the music, who cares?
I continue to write songs that are topically related to social, political and economic issues of our time, but I also recognize that onstage, I have a lot of fun and audiences have a lot of fun, so I'm trying to package the messages in music and sounds that are fun to perform and fun to listen to.
I normally feel relief that I didn't die onstage or forget all my lines. Then I start remembering that I have to do it again sometime, and it'll probably not go as well.
I was at the radio station all the time and on the air all the time. I met John Travolta and a lot of the other big '70s icons. Shaun Cassidy sang 'Da Do Ron Ron' to me onstage. I thought I was a rock star; I had an all-access-pass childhood.
I've gotten to where my hair is like my onstage prop; I need to hide behind it and throw it around - it's my slo-mo effect.
I design a lot of things that I wear onstage, but I'm always looking for unique stuff. I like creative things, so anything I can find at a secondhand costume shop to a Helmut Lang store, it doesn't matter - just unique stuff.
A big part of becoming a funny person was a major defense mechanism. Onstage, especially as a woman, I've had to be really tough. The second you show a crack, the audience can literally leave.
I feel like sometimes I get even more goofy onstage than I am offstage. I'm not trying to make the music less than what it is. Even if it's hard for me and I have to think about a lot of details, it's none of the audience's business. I don't want them to feel that I'm having a hard time.
There are a lot of Israeli musicians in New York because you want to grow and go onstage, and eventually you have to get out of Israel to do that because there aren't enough places to play.
There is a healthy amount of self-doubt and criticism with most people that make music. You find your areas that are your best. Onstage, I am good. But talking to someone in the grocery store? Forget about it.
What I wear onstage is so stylized and bold.
The most amazing thing is being onstage and watching the audience sing every song lyric for lyric.
I mean, you still can't jump offstage and go read a book. But I'm getting better at it. It is something you can manage. You can still give everything you have to the audience onstage, and have something for yourself.
I'm a Brooklyn guy onstage, and I try to really feed my fans with the kind of material they expect from me.
As far as being onstage, commanding presence, I've always looked up to people like Axl Rose and Freddie Mercury and Paul Stanley - the rock gods. I've always wanted to be able to achieve that level of commanding nature onstage and really leading people at a show.
There is no reason why a guitar player makes the guitar-playing faces. It doesn't help you play guitar. You've not improved your skills. It's because you're up onstage, and the natural inclination is to put on a show. The rock guy faces are just as much of a front or a show as us wearing crazy makeup. It's just a different scale.
If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.
I think that's what makes a great show: when the performers onstage aren't putting on a show, they're legitimately just having a freaking awesome time.
I suppose people do sometimes not understand the seeming disparity between my onstage personality and my public personality in the press. But I feel that I am definitely a louder, more outspoken person with those I am close to.
Pure entertainment is not an egotistical lady singing boring songs onstage for two hours and people in tuxes clapping whether they like it or not. It's the real performers on the street who can hold people's attention and keep them from walking away.
