Winning a contest - get just good enough

I know a few perfectionists. You probably do too. You can tell who they are, because of a few giveaways.
They tend to be driven, high-achieving types. Obviously they tend to obsess about getting things "just so." They can be caught straightening the silverware at restaurants.

Another thing that tends to go hand in hand with perfectionism is an obsession with technique. Technical things are like candy to a perfectionist - they are pleasantly objective and measurable. And I don't want to downplay the importance of technical matters in performance. It's hard to keep an audience engaged in the story if you're singing out of tune! It's hard for a dancer to keep an audience enthralled with the story behind the movement if she falls into the orchestra pit!

If you're a perfectionist, or you know one, I want to help you. I suspect that at some level you are getting in your own way. This article is for you.

The first thing you need to grapple with is that there is no such thing as perfect. A chord can always be more in tune, better balanced. A phrase can always have a better shape. A pirouette can always be straighter. (You can probably tell from that comment that I am no dancer!)

I mean, you don't want to give up on making things technically good, but you need that 80/20 thing. That last 20% of technical perfection isn't getting you anywhere near the benefit of the first 80%, but it's much, much harder to do.

You've got to understand that technique is a means to an end, not and end in itself. Geeks in your chosen field will respect excellent technique, but the audience doesn't care about it at all - they care about the feelings you are inspiring in them. It wouldn't matter to them if you did it through flawless technique or smoke and mirrors - the experience is what they want, and how they get there makes no difference. Now if *you* are a geek in your field (and I confess that I am certainly that), you might enjoy striving for flawlessness, in the same way that some people enjoy trying to bowl 300. So go nuts - fill your boots! Just don't confuse it for something that the audience cares about.

The beautiful thing is, you don't need to be perfect even if you're trying to win a contest. You need to be just perfect enough so that the technical flaws are not distracting. You need to be good enough to let the scene shine through, and evoke emotional reactions from the audience.  This is an incredibly liberating belief, because you can save yourself a lot of time in rehearsal.  Maybe you'll be able to use some of that rehearsal time on higher-leverage activities like understanding the music, and creating high-impact scenes!

This is what I'm saying - any effort you put into technique after it's already a non-issue is wasted effort from the audience's perspective. The real pinnacle of the art form is to create a situation in which people are inclined to ignore your mistakes. And that is the topic of a future article.