Once you've experienced the warmth of an audience, the achievement of getting your first laugh, and entertaining them, singing or playing piano, it just keeps it all going.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
For anyone who works in front of an audience there is no thrill quite like that of feeling and hearing the evidence of the audience members' enjoyment. Laughter and applause really are powerful.
We try to connect with the audience as much as we can. We feel the energy from the audience, and it gives us so much joy and inspiration.
And the goal really is to make the audience laugh, to bring them some joy.
You lose your energy, you lose that excitement and it gets the audience up.
When onstage, I always try to take my audience through as many emotions as I possibly can. I want them to go from laughter to tears, be shocked and surprised and walk out the door with a renewed sense of themselves - and maybe a smile.
I'm really only happy when I'm on stage. I just feed off the energy of the audience. That's what I'm all about - people and laughter.
It's a little like casting out hundreds of fishing lines into the audience. You start getting little bites, then more, then you hook a few, then more. Then you can start reeling them in and that's a loveliest feeling - the whole audience laughing with you.
The audience changes every night. You're the same person. You have to speak your mind and do the stuff that you think is funny and makes you laugh.