"After about 15 minutes, you feel that you're winning them over"
About this Quote
After about 15 minutes, you feel that you're winning them over is the kind of backstage truth that sounds casual until you realize how much pressure it contains. Chita Rivera isnt talking about ego; shes naming the job description. Live theater begins as a negotiation with strangers who didnt come to validate you. They came to be convinced. Those first minutes are a referendum: on your authority, the shows rhythm, the rooms mood, even on whether the audience wants to be generous tonight.
The line is built on a performers clock, not a critics. Fifteen minutes is long enough for the opening number to land, for a character to sharpen into focus, for the audience to stop scanning and start surrendering. Its also short enough to feel like a high-wire act: youre not settling in, youre auditioning in real time. Winning them over implies resistance, and Rivera is honest about that resistance without complaining. She frames the audience as a force to read and manage, not a faceless mass to impress.
Context matters: Rivera came up in an era when Broadway stars were expected to deliver athletic precision night after night, often in roles where charisma had to do extra work against typecasting and industry gatekeeping. The subtext is survival craft: you cant wait for perfect conditions. You build trust fast, you hold the room, you make them want to follow you. Theater, in her telling, is less magic than earned consent.
The line is built on a performers clock, not a critics. Fifteen minutes is long enough for the opening number to land, for a character to sharpen into focus, for the audience to stop scanning and start surrendering. Its also short enough to feel like a high-wire act: youre not settling in, youre auditioning in real time. Winning them over implies resistance, and Rivera is honest about that resistance without complaining. She frames the audience as a force to read and manage, not a faceless mass to impress.
Context matters: Rivera came up in an era when Broadway stars were expected to deliver athletic precision night after night, often in roles where charisma had to do extra work against typecasting and industry gatekeeping. The subtext is survival craft: you cant wait for perfect conditions. You build trust fast, you hold the room, you make them want to follow you. Theater, in her telling, is less magic than earned consent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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