The radio play that Bob Bullen wrote is pretty illustrative, and it gets to why I, as an artist, never ask people how they liked my show directly afterwards . I don't expect them to answer me immediately. It's stressful. I thank them for coming and let them stay or not stay or whatever. I'm in a particular place of burden; I am not only the artist, but the producer -- I'm the one biting at my fingernails hoping that the play is a success because it's my pocket book that will hurt. And I'm the one who invested my heart and soul into a work that I really do believe will get out there. So if, two minutes after I just went through it, and in the middle of several more weeks of working on this , someone tells me what they think, like really what they think, there's nothing I can do about it . At that moment. It just hurts. And you have to go out there and continue to represent the work for what it is. It's hard. (And guess what -- I bet your feedback is going to be a lot more useful after you've had a chance to think about it and figure out why it worked or didn't work). So I am sympathetic to the idea that immediately after a show it might be painful to say that the work is a failure . However: 2) LYING HELPS NO ONE I don't think