I don't hate myself anymore. I used to hate my work, hated that sexy image, hated those pictures of me onstage, hated that big raunchy person. Onstage, I'm acting the whole time I'm there. As soon as I get out of those songs, I'm Tina again.
I was basically a dork that hit the books and liked to build things and did all of the things that you weren't supposed to do to be popular. But somehow I ended up onstage, playing guitar in front of everybody else.
Me in my music and onstage - that's me without any fears of judgement; that's me when I'm shining.
No, because I was always nervous about being onstage.
Certainly, I, as an audience, am stricken with terror if I see only two people onstage. And one person, I think, is even harder for people to take.
I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.
When you return to the same area a few times, you get that frequent rapport with the public and the fans of the music along with having a certain warmth when you walk onstage.
When I got a part in 'All American Girl,' in 1994, I remember thinking, 'Now I have a series, I'm not going to need to do standup,' but every night I'd go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.
I specifically remember doing the musical 'Sweet Charity' at Stagedoor. I was playing Vittorio Vidal, which is a very funny part, and some other small roles. I couldn't really sing that well, but there were so many fun bits, and I just remember the tremendous adrenaline rush I felt from being onstage and hearing the audience enjoying it.
I really enjoy creating music onstage, to participate in making music live.
I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I'm going in is eventually, you won't know if it's a joke or not.
If you can jump up onstage and make people laugh, shouldn't you also be able to inhabit a character?
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.
There was a time where I knew I was as funny as many dudes, but I had people telling me, 'You have to wear a dress onstage. You need to be more feminine.'
The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn't stand the sight of the audience.
When I appear onstage, that's my departure from Momhood - and I transform into Natalie MacMaster: the entertainer, the fiddler, the performer.
I went to a concert once when I was a little kid and ran up onstage, started dancing, started saying anything that came to my head. I was like a little vaudevillian.
For years, I was stuck behind a keyboard rig. When I started playing guitar onstage, it was a bit of a release - not to be stuck in one spot the whole night. It's really enjoyable having the freedom to move around. You just have to remember to end up somewhere near a microphone.
Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.
When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.
I would get ill before going onstage - something about getting in front of people, and if they don't laugh, I'm a bomb. I got over it when somebody laughed.
I started when Chris Rock did 'Bigger & Blacker.' I used to watch that before I went onstage as inspiration to get hype, but I noticed I started taking on his cadence and talking like him. I was also doing the New York-style comedy thing, which was angry and annoyed. I was creating a persona instead of trying to embrace my own.
You want to have butterflies in your stomach, because if you don't, if you walk out onstage complacent, that's not a good thing.
I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about 'the character,' and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.
I thought I was going to be a lot more freaked out by being naked onstage. I think on film I would have been more freaked out, because film is less forgiving. But onstage it's lit so beautifully. It would make my mother look good.
To be completely stripped bare of any image power or my hair. To step onstage and get the response that I got blew any problems I had about self-image out the door.
But even so, I still get nervous before I go onstage.
I remember being onstage once when I didn't have fear: I got so scared I didn't have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack.
Onstage, it's more of a momentary pressure.
On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage... You start to think that you're Tom Jones.
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.
When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.
In the early days, we just wore black onstage. Very bold, my dear. Then we introduced white, for variety, and it simply grew and grew.
The premise that we're working with is that when most people go to a show, they're not really watching what's going on onstage. They may be watching what's on the screen. But when the songs are playing in their mind's eye, they're actually watching a movie.
You know, I think whatever a comic talks about onstage is all they talk about offstage.
I sort of fell in love with it when I was in high school doing theater. And so, as sometimes happens when kids - they graduate high school, and people turn to them and say, 'So what are you going to do with your life?' I thought, 'Well, I like being onstage. I like being an actor.'