Mrs. AG was sweating bullets the last few days prepping and finetuning a presentation for a multi-million dollar project that she had to present to one of her biggest and most important clients.
Last night she came home elated–not only did she kick major ass (she can always tell if she has), but they even gave her a standing ovation! (This was a room of 70 execs).
I asked her if this was her first SO and, unsurprisingly, she had to think about it(given that she’s such a superstar, it didn’t surprise me that she had, though she couldn’t quite nail down the last time it had happened).
Me? Never. Not even close, really.
So, have you ever had a SO? And I’m not talking as a matter of course, but a spontaneous expression that went beyond what you expected. Share!
I gave a speech in High School for “National Honor Society” and got a spontaneous round of laughter/applause in the middle for a joke I’d written.
No standing O at the end, but still a spontaneous boom.
Also, once at soccer camp, I pulled off a perfect, insanely painful “Alabama Chicken”(*) off the diving board during a belly-flop competition, and when I rose to the surface, the cheers were echoing off the natatorium walls.
(*) The alabama chicken involves grabbing both ankles with both hands and arching your back so that you slam the water diaphragm-first with NOTHING to buffer the belly flop (like arms or thighs in a normal belly flop). It’s easy to go in too vertical, thus diminishing the pain. If you do it right, it should feel like you landed on concrete.
In my undergrdauate years I wrote a play, based on a true incident. I did it as a between-semesters project with other budding playwrights. The next semester I took a course on drama, and since I had the play already in hand, I submitted it for performance.
We had the reading in one of the rehearsal rooms under the theater. I sat in trhe back, so I wouldn’t have to look at people (I wwas tremendiously shy about having my work read). Shortly into the performance I has my head buried in my arms. I could hear EVERY …STUPID …MISTAKE. Every awkward line. I figured that, before they finished, I could quietly slink out of the room without anyone noticing.
But I didn’t. After the last line was read, there was a deafening silence.
I looked up and saw that Everyone in the room had swiveled around, and was looking at me.
Then they broke into applause. I was flabbergasted.
(They eventually turned the play into a videotaped performance, but I never got a copy, and it’s probably disappeared by now.)
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You get used to them, but they’re still nice when they happen. The problem is you never know when you’ll get one. Sometimes you think the show is on fire, and the applause is tepid; sometimes you’re just going through the motions and when the lights fade at the end the audience spontaneously climbs over the seats to offer oral sex at the edge of the stage. The joy, as a result, gets somewhat diluted over the years.
Yep, a few times, playing music in public, when we were unusually good. Some nights you’re “on” and once in a blue moon, you’re “on fire.” That was when it happened.
The first time: Once, in the '70s I was at a bar on a Saturday afternoon. This run-of-the-mill band was playing a matinee set, and they took a break and invited anyone from the audience up to play their instruments. We, a collection of musicians who neither knew each other nor had played together before, were so much better than the booked group, we got a standing ovation at the end. I don’t think the group was too happy about it.
I took a graduate level class as an undergraduate for my architecture degree. It was on building construction and 50% of your grade was determined by a group project (3 person team) where you did a presentation on a building of your choice and each group member did an analysis (structural, aesthetic, functional). You got a group grade and an individual grade.
Being that it was a graduate level course and the instructor was a partner in a big downtown firm who was very serious and stern I was just hoping to get a passing grade and not embarass myself.
Apparently our presentation blew his socks off since he announced to the class that ours was the best he’d seen since teaching that course, announced that each of us would get an A+ group and individual, and then made the class give us a round of applause.
A few. Several times when I was singing with a professional chorus.
But the ones that stand out are the ones that were just for me. Especially when we did A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum in college. I played Domina (the mother) and I had this fantastic, blow-off-the-barn-doors solo. And each night I absolutely stopped the show. Still tickles the stew out of me when I think about it.
My parents were friends with the high school director, so I started being in high school plays in 4th grade. I got a couple tepid standing Os when I was the star of the play my sophomore year. I describe it as tepid because it just seemed to me to be forced. My senior year, I played the villain in one play. My beloved director had quit directing the year before, and the new guy I felt was an asshole. I was pretty uninspired and really didn’t study much for the role. I was pretty nervous opening night because of that. Thankfully, I didn’t blow it. When it was time to bow, me and the other two primaries were the last to line up, and I was the first to bow. I totally wasn’t expecting it, and when the crowd all but sat down for the other two, I knew it was meant for me. That blew me away. I actually went home that night and studied my lines. The O’s continued for the run. I had struck a chord with the audiences, but I still don’t know what it was.
I had a very similar experience. I went to Space Camp in 9th grade. There were some cute girls on my team. We went to a big pool to do some water eggress training and then we had free swimming time afterwards. These guys wanted to have a diving contest from the high dive and I agreed to do it to. I quickly saw that they were much more impressive than my more meager skills allowed. I went last and climbed up the high dive slowly. Mid-way up, I made up my mind and walked to the end of the board and did a swan dive except I stayed perfectly flat. The impact was much worse than I feared. It was like gutting punched in the gut while being being hit by 10 leather belts at the same instant as getting racked down below.
That might have been the time I got the most applause as well but I went into retirement as soon as I climbed out.
Singing in a church choir, I (or rather we)'ve gotten a number of standing ovations, usually on “Cantata Sunday”–usually a Sunday in Mid-December where most of the service is dedicated to the Choir singing a variety of music, often with a small group of instrumentalists.
Standing ovations are fairly common, especially in the later services, but it can be hard to tell whether it’s sincere or the result of prodding by the Pastor or just a Thank You for all the hard work.
Still, it was kind of a letdown the year we did a Passion Play and actively discouraged applause–it just doesn’t set the right tone, when the play ends with the body being carried out feet first, and then the minister says “Come back next week for the rest of the story” (The Passion Play was performed on Palm Sunday).
We didn’t expect or want a Standing Ovation, yet the total lack of applause made our performance feel incomplete.
I give speeches and do consulting on a fairly regular basis. I recently gave a talk about my high school and college experiences, and how they led me to the field of education at my alma mater for a student group of which I was a member in my college days. There were people from my high school, administrators and faculty from my college, and students. Not to mention a smattering of friends and family.
The speech was outlined but I more or less dropped the outline and extemped. When I finished, I was a little emotional, looking down. I heard people moving their chairs out to stand. It was an awesome feeling but it felt very strange at the same time. I wanted folks to sit down, but they stood for a while. It was a little embarrassing as well. But nice as well.
If band gigs count, I’ve received dozens. The best was from a group of about 3,000 people, possibly more. It’s exhilarating to say the least. The adrenaline alone could start a fire.
I suck at taking compliments, but that night was really trying. People kept coming up to me slapping me on the back, and I just had to say “yeah, thanks”. It took me a year or two to get to that point even. It’s not everyday that you’re handed a large portion of self-esteem on a huge platter.
I was the weird nerd in school. Science, math, arts and stuff I could leap over others with out even realizing I was doing it, and of course it “cut me out from the crowd”.
In grade six, we had a “Language arts” course on public speaking. It had two components. one was on a chosen topic, and one was extremporous.
My chosen topic was on "the formation of Ox bow Lakes in marsh Lands (Indeed a nerd of the first degree) - other student spoke on sports figuires, clebrities and pop muisic. No applause for my first effort.
The teacher would get us in front of the room and give us our second topic. We could take 15 seconds of silence as mental preparation, and then HAD to begin speaking.
He looked me square in the eye and said “Freedom- that’s your subject”
I spoke for 3 minutes.
I honestly do not remember what I said, as all I remember is the jock, cool guy, and all around golden boy got up and started to clap. The rest of the room soon joined him.
Wish I had a record of that… (what I actually said, not the ovation)
Ah, high school theater. Being what it was, we got the standing O every time. My junior year I played Captain Von Trapp. I was second to last out at the end before the girl who played Maria. I usually got a strong clap.
The best though, was senior year. We did “Our Town” in which I played the narrator/Stage Manager. It was a nice thrill to get that real extra oomph in the applause when I took my bow. Memories…
I have had a couple. Probably the coolest was at a guitar solo contest.
I had just moved to Florida with my band and they entered me in a guitar solo contest. I was less than enthused about the whole thing, I tend to think guitar solos are usually quite boring, but they talked me into it using the ‘But it’ll be good publiciity’ bit.
I showed up in bermuda shorts and a t-shirt (it was outside and really hot) while everyone else was all dressed to impress. I got up on stage and people started wandering away towards the vendors. I started playing, I improved the whole thing, and did my three minutes. When I finished it was silent for a second then someone yelled ‘Who the fuck * is that?’ A friend of mine yelled 'That’s Cannabis, man’. Then I got a standing O. There were about 1000 people there. Not bad. I ended up winning the thing.
The funny part is I improvised the whole thing and played some weird shit. I managed to fit in part of the Twilight Zone theme into the second solo.
We got a bunch of people out to our first show due the solo contest.
Slee
*That ended up being my nickname, even though I didn’t smoke the stuff. It is a long story.
