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You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.
Laura Linney
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Emotional performances can sometimes lack impact if the audience is not engaged with the story being told.

Laura Linney emphasizes the importance of storytelling in performances, suggesting that mere displays of emotion do not resonate with the audience unless they are connected to a compelling narrative. She points out that while visual expressions of sorrow might be apparent, they can be indulgent and fail to evoke any feelings if the underlying story does not captivate the audience's interest.

Themes

StorytellingPerformanceEmotionAudienceNarrative

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion on the impact of theater and film, one could cite this quote to emphasize the importance of a strong narrative.

More from Laura Linney

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.
Laura LinneyRead

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