Hmm, I have certainly seen really excellent dress rehearsals followed by shabby opening nights. And if we do fantastically on the opening night, we often do a little less well (though still usually a good show) the next night. People get lax and allow themselves to be distracted by other things.
All that said, your experience is different, and I acknowledge that. I may be suffering from confirmation bias, but I don’t think so for the group I sing with. It may also be that, in theater, you are far more likely to be noticed if you make a mistake, whereas in choral music you can often be covered by the rest of your section.
Hmm, I have certainly seen really excellent dress rehearsals followed by shabby opening nights. And if we do fantastically on the opening night, we often do a little less well (though still usually a good show) the next night. People get lax and allow themselves to be distracted by other things.
Might this be regression to the mean? Following a particularly good performance, the majority of possible performances are not as good as the particularly good preceding performance. See also the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx. (I vaguely recall reading about this quite some time ago from a source that went into more depth than the Wiki article, not sure where though.)
For activities like competitive sports or extemporaneous acting, I could see what you’re saying. But, I don’t think that the quality of different performances of a given show, in which the actions are the same each performance, would be scattered in a Gaussian or other randomized way. A performer generally expects only to improve on a particular show, as long as one applies oneself, as will have been happening during the rehearsal period leading up to the performances. If there is a reduction in performance quality on a given show, either the performers are not applying themselves with the same intensity (as I suggested), or there is some other explanation.
Now, if you compared performance quality across different shows and different seasons, you might see something more like a random scattering around a mean.
If there is a reduction in performance quality on a given show, either the performers are not applying themselves with the same intensity (as I suggested), or there is some other explanation.
Whatever factors, including intensitity of actors applying themselves, affect the quality of performance, themselves will have some distribution that can be mapped to a distribution of performance quality. If a particularly good performance occurs because all the actors had a good previous day, got good sleep the previous night, and applied themselves with full intensity, then the following performance is not likely to repeat that confluence of favorable factors and therefor is not likely to repeat the same quality of performance.
I can’t speak to professional theatre, but among amateurs in my experience average quality of performance may increase over time (though it’s hard to be sure over 6-9 performances), but that’s swamped by show-to-show variability. Some performances just “click” better than others.
Whether the variability is “randomized,” or a product of us not “applying ourselves” with the same intensity, or there is instead “some other explanation,” I don’t really know. It certainly feels like there are all kinds of contributing factors… the audience, the kind of day everyone has had, etc. … and one could measure those factors and look for correlations, and manipulate them to see what happens, but I’ve never seen any such results.
I expect that audience response is the single strongest correlate to variability in performance (once outliers like actors having heart attacks or sets catching fire are eliminated), but the causality there may be entirely in the other direction.
Beyond that, I’d guess sleep. (Which we can consider rolled into “applying oneself,” I suppose.)
Hmm, I have certainly seen really excellent dress rehearsals followed by shabby opening nights. And if we do fantastically on the opening night, we often do a little less well (though still usually a good show) the next night. People get lax and allow themselves to be distracted by other things.
All that said, your experience is different, and I acknowledge that. I may be suffering from confirmation bias, but I don’t think so for the group I sing with. It may also be that, in theater, you are far more likely to be noticed if you make a mistake, whereas in choral music you can often be covered by the rest of your section.
Might this be regression to the mean? Following a particularly good performance, the majority of possible performances are not as good as the particularly good preceding performance. See also the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx. (I vaguely recall reading about this quite some time ago from a source that went into more depth than the Wiki article, not sure where though.)
For activities like competitive sports or extemporaneous acting, I could see what you’re saying. But, I don’t think that the quality of different performances of a given show, in which the actions are the same each performance, would be scattered in a Gaussian or other randomized way. A performer generally expects only to improve on a particular show, as long as one applies oneself, as will have been happening during the rehearsal period leading up to the performances. If there is a reduction in performance quality on a given show, either the performers are not applying themselves with the same intensity (as I suggested), or there is some other explanation.
Now, if you compared performance quality across different shows and different seasons, you might see something more like a random scattering around a mean.
Whatever factors, including intensitity of actors applying themselves, affect the quality of performance, themselves will have some distribution that can be mapped to a distribution of performance quality. If a particularly good performance occurs because all the actors had a good previous day, got good sleep the previous night, and applied themselves with full intensity, then the following performance is not likely to repeat that confluence of favorable factors and therefor is not likely to repeat the same quality of performance.
I can’t speak to professional theatre, but among amateurs in my experience average quality of performance may increase over time (though it’s hard to be sure over 6-9 performances), but that’s swamped by show-to-show variability. Some performances just “click” better than others.
Whether the variability is “randomized,” or a product of us not “applying ourselves” with the same intensity, or there is instead “some other explanation,” I don’t really know. It certainly feels like there are all kinds of contributing factors… the audience, the kind of day everyone has had, etc. … and one could measure those factors and look for correlations, and manipulate them to see what happens, but I’ve never seen any such results.
I expect that audience response is the single strongest correlate to variability in performance (once outliers like actors having heart attacks or sets catching fire are eliminated), but the causality there may be entirely in the other direction.
Beyond that, I’d guess sleep. (Which we can consider rolled into “applying oneself,” I suppose.)