Taking a bow

TAKING A BOW after a public performance, and before an audience, is usually expected. This is an occasion for others to show appreciation for a public feat, like a long speech before a crowd, even one that has been given incentives to wildly show their approval. The loud accolade can be a disguised sigh of relief that the long ordeal of pretending to be mesmerized is over.

Competition in talent contests even requires the audience to vote with their applause and choose the best performance staged before them. The judges still have the final say on when to push the buzzer of approval.

College athletes too stand before their school’s cheering crowd to hear the alma mater song as they bathe in the applause and love of supporters after a victory. Even in a defeat, especially if a close one where the last shot to win the game is missed, there is some acknowledgement of appreciation. The losing team gets to weep in public as players simultaneously raise their arms and wipe their tears at the school song.

In the healthcare arena, doctors and nurses do not feel the need to take a bow for a successful procedure. This is done quietly when visiting the recovering patient in his room. A few questions are enough to complete the performance. (Do you feel any pain?) Only when the bill is presented can the patient applaud the doctors involved. (Were there really eight?) There is no need to take a bow.

What about karaoke evenings with friends? Here, there is an unwritten rule not to hog the mike. The audience also happens to be the performing group. They are waiting for their turn after chugging down two beers. Does the singer take a bow? (You want me to do “My way” again?) Please pass the mike to the next belter — “Let me try again?”

Theater has a tradition at the end of the play to call back the performers to take their bow. This allows the audience to show appreciation with standing ovations and prolonged applause, with shouts of “bravo.” Even the sequence of onstage entrances is preordained. The “extras” come on stage first and receive polite applause. Then it’s the supporting cast, building up to the main stars. The applause builds up to a crescendo as the main star enters the stage and holds hands with the front row cast to take her bow.

The number of curtain calls signifies the success of the performance when the exiting artist is called back to take yet another bow and sometimes accommodates the audience with an encore number. (The audience can sing along at this point.)

Movies in the end credits sometimes employ this device to show the actor and his role or to splice together bloopers and outtakes. The movies of Marvel uses the rolling end credits to introduce sequels, a nasty device that early moviegoers miss when they leave the theater thinking there’s nothing more to see but the name of the caterers and hairdressers.

The curtain call’s equivalent in corporate life is the “despedida party.” This quaint event honors a departing colleague and thus displays some of the curtain call’s theater tradition. Still, unless the retiree is off to a well-deserved mandatory retirement and migrating to Spain after discovering ancestors with the required racial credentials, the manner of exit can be more quietly observed. (Sir, no need to take a bow.)

Throughout a career, there is the constant opportunity to take a bow for a job well done. The rating system which determines promotions and the level of variable pay depends on who gets the credit for the delivered targets.

There is sometimes the issue of determining who really deserves the credit. And it is not always the one who struts on the stage waving at the audience, even if he’s making a full bow from the waist.

The desire for applause is not universal. Taking a bow is a ritual more than a requirement of social graces. There are those who prefer to work behind the scenes and keep their financial successes quiet. After all, the response may not be applause, but envy… and a possible investigation.

Tony Samson is chairman and CEO of TOUCH xda.

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