In the performing arts you have to have thick, thick, thick skin, because of all the rejection you face on a daily basis, and the fact that work never lasts for very long. But you need thin, thin, thin skin in order to access all of your emotions and your creativity so that you can express it. You can't be dead inside. Otherwise you've got nothing to give. So it's a paradox, that we have to exist in both planes in order to do what we do.
Audra McDonaldI want to thank all the shoulders of the strong and brave and courageous women that I am standing on.
Audra McDonaldI played Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music and everybody's like, "Well she wouldn't have been this and that, she shouldn't be playing it." Well I'm going to do it and I did it. I've been warned my entire life and I've persisted and that's what I hope my children will do as well.
Audra McDonaldYou feel the communion of the collective consciousness in that moment when you're on stage doing something and the audience is absolutely with you. And the audience becomes a collective entity as well. They come in from separate places and socio-economic backgrounds, and places across the world and days that they've had, and then they come together and they become one collective thing, and experience something in a collective way.
Audra McDonaldTheater doesn't bring money in general. That's not why you do it. If you go into theater for money then you've really gone into the wrong business.
Audra McDonald