Audiences are brilliant collective critics and unreliable individual ones.

observation — attributed to Jason Alexander

Alexander does not believe in asking audience members to serve as individual critics. Opinions are like nostrils, people usually have at least two, and asking them to critique gets you a hodgepodge of opinions filtered through the lens you asked them to apply. Watched as a collective, the same audience tells you everything. Shifting in seats, coughing, bathroom trips, the speed at which they leave at intermission, intended laughs versus unintended ones, leaning forward versus sitting back. The room is a measurement instrument. The mistake is asking it to be a panel.

For directors, producers, and event designers reading audience response during previews or early performances. The principle generalizes to any live audience signal.

audience-feedback, previews, critique, collective-intelligence