Ask a Judge, Talking on Stage
Posted by Kevin Keller | Posted in Contests & Judging, Uncategorized | Posted on July 23, 2012, 6:45 PM
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From Al Spence
I’m puzzled by the scores awarded to the Salem chorus. I thought C & J was trying to enforce a cutting-down of the amount of talking in a contest set. This set lasted approximately 25 minutes, most of which was talking. This is supposed to be a contest, not a chapter show. Did they actually sing a complete barbershop arrangement? I totally lost track with all of their breaks to say a bunch of “ughs”. Did their so-called parodies receive all of the required authorizations? I was shocked to see them awarded 5th place medals! What would happen if every chorus in the contest did 25 minute sets with that much talking? The contest with breaks and intermissions would last about 20 hours!! Could you please explain why the judges didn’t disqualify them?
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From Marty Lovick
Hi Al
I understand the concern re “what if everybody was on stage for 22 minutes?” .. I suspect IF this became anywhere near the norm, the Society Board would ask scjc to address it. We in Prs, until given further instructions therefore judge effectiveness. If a comedy themed performance takes too long to develop or never develops, the responsibilty of the Prs jduge is to assign a score based on the level of emotional impact and entertainment.Of course, this is our charge in all performances.
In context .. this was the last competitor of the day – a LONG day. The timing of this monumental comedic work certainly wasn’t lost on an audience that had seen many fine varied performances, and were anticipating the results soon to come.The audience was ready for something refreshingly different and they got it.
Prs judges the emotional impact and entertainment value of the perfomances .. including vocal and visual aspects .. and in the case of a comedy theme we ask ” did it work?’. From various technical angles the performance took a while to get going and some of the long non-singing periods were less effective in maintaining energy than others.However once they started the longer periods of singing and the lyric parodies started working the level of entertainment rose.
While we need be cautious about a simple “applause meter” indicator of impact, when the audience is really going nuts that says something about the impact for sure!One other litmus test for us is ” was this a comedy act with a bit of barbershop thrown in” or was it barbershop performance with a musically comedic theme? In the eyes of the Prs judges it did become clear it was the latter.It took a while to get there but it got there.
There are certainly a number of suggestions which could have crisped up the performance and kept it on track in a tighter format, but the impact holistically was greater than either the sum of the parts or the sum of the flaws.
Marty Lovick
Presentation Category Specialist
I’m still confused. Is there a time limit? If so, what is it? Is there a penalty for violation? What is it? Who enforces?
hi Sheldon
Set time limits have not been in place for many years. The Prs category has interest in this topic from a performance standpoint in that IF a song is too short to develop, or too long [ ie "wears out it's welcome"] our score should reflect the overall entertainment impact.
Marty Lovick
Prs Category Specialist