Livingston Taylor: Be Ferociously Curious

Livingston Taylor

Professor of Voice Berklee College of music

"What I teach in Stage Performance starts with the assumption that we need an audience—the audience does not need us. And the audience has the right to reject what we offer. I ask my students, 'What's going to happen to you if they don't buy into your reality?' And they say, 'Oh, we'll all be sad,' or 'Maybe I'll do something else,' and I'll go, 'Stop it. It's gonna kill you.' And they laugh out loud at that, because that's the way they feel, and finally somebody isn't saying, 'Oh, you'll be fine, honey.'"

"Above all else, performers need to be what I call 'ferociously curious.' Secondly, they need to watch their creativity land: to watch it arrive. It's not enough to just create and throw it out there. You have to watch it land. When you do things that people like, do those things again. When you do things that they don't like, don't do 'em any more. This is not rocket science here."