The Seven Deadly Sins of Performance

You may be familiar already with the Seven Deadly Sins of olde, but in case you are not, they are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.  Yes, even though it reads like a list of what everyone wants to do at Club Med, they are still nasty sins and you should avoid them, or face peril!  Reading through the list, you might have noted one or two that you're not avoiding as well as you used to...

But this blog of mine has nothing to do with sins of that kind.  We're all about performance here, so rather than focus on sins of the biblical sort, we're going to publish a list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Performance - those actions and inactions that when committed, turn what might have been a great performance into something less satisfying for all concerned.

Why seven, you might be asking?  Well, there's no really good reason for that, but when I started putting together a list, they seemed to group into just exactly seven items!  Previously I had also noticed that there were seven major activities involved in performance, namely skill development, wise purpose, artistic insight, planning, rehearsal, preparation and execution a.k.a. actually performing or just "performance."

So apparently the universe organizes itself in sevens - who knew?

In the next few weeks I will put together seven articles, each describing one deadly sin for each major activity listed above.  I'll tell you how you can tell a performer has committed that sin, and why they might have done it, and how to fix it!

I'm excited - I hope you are as well.