The Edinburgh Festival Fringe officially starts today, and is the biggest test for stand-up comics, where they have to deliver an hour or more of amazing material every night, in a sea of other people all trying to do exactly the same thing within a half-mile radius. So, no pressure.
I predict this year that some shows will be good, some bad, a few amazing and one or two terrible (pretty bold claim, I know.) Going to see shows before they go up to Edinburgh can be good fun. Seeing shows after they’ve been to Edinburgh however, is a very different kettle of ball-games.
The post-Edinburgh show is a thing of beauty, because it’s been honed through three weeks of performances, during which all kinds of things will have happened (including, possibly, the comic simply wanting to wrap the whole thing up and go home).
The lesson here is not simply that the more experience you can get, the better you get. Instead it’s this:
There is almost no upper limit on how quickly you can learn from experience.
It’s like learning anything, such as how to drive, dance, or play the piano. As long as you have some form of feedback (preferably a trusted audience member):
- …the presenter who gives the same presentation twenty times over two years might improve by some amount.
- …the presenter who gives the same presentation twenty times over two days will not only improve far more quickly, but by a far greater amount.