[ Cara Bean and I decided on simultaneous whims to show off the benefits of our unusually prominent eyeballs by hypnotizing one another first thing Saturday morning. Consequently, we both spent the weekend shuffling about and half-smiling into middle distance while awaiting the other’s instruction. ]
“How was the show,” we’ll be asked. We’ll abbreviate our answers to varying degrees; significantly for friends who ask politely, substantially for the coworkers who covered our shifts, but our unlucky spouses and lovers will probably have to sit through the ambivalence and pontification the others are spared. It’s a simple question, yes, but with a variety of complicated questions embedded in it.
How should we evaluate our festival weekends? How do we decide if the substantial time and money they require was well-spent? How do we come to conclude that a show was or wasn’t good? There are a lot of potential criteria:
