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.)
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.)