How to win a contest - series intro

A good friend of mine used to say that he loved military metaphors, because war focuses the mind.  When the situation is life or death, the calculations are urgent and crisp, because there's no time to worry about grey area.  And in performance, the closest thing to war is the contest - a microcosm of the whole artistic world, reduced to its essence.  Studying the contest will teach you a lot about audiences, about perception, about preparation, about state of mind, and about truth and passion.  And in the process, I think competitors who follow along and participate can bet on a dramatic improvement in the odds that they will improve their standing, and that they will come out on top!

The contest scenario I'm most familiar with is the barbershop quartet/chorus contest, but experts from other fields will notice a lot of crossover to acting auditions, American Idol, and even the Olympics.

In this series I plan to cover the following topics, more or less:

• Knowing your stuff
• Understanding the judges
• Barbershop judging categories
• Choosing the right scenario
• Shock and Awe
• The two sides of identity
• The power of visualization
• Serving only one master
• Recency and primacy

Look for this series regularly on Owning The Stage!

Tom