Good Shows vs. Great Shows

In the opinion of many powerful magi, you’d hear things like connection quality with the audience, the frequency of the reaction beats, the sight of a standing O, or the after-show quotables of spectators recounting what they saw/felt as all being signs of a show's greatness.

Will my show be talked about years to come? What ripple effect will result? Will I get re-booked? Will this win a magic competition or smoke rival magi? Will the footage of it get me many Likes, preferably from the populars of the magic community? I respect these valid, human questions as I’ve subjected myself to entertaining them.

Upon alternate reflection, here are seven Hagakure- or Hidden Beneath the Leaves- signs I would look for to distinguish a good show from a great show, or rather a show of value vs. a show of success:

1. I looked at the audience with compassion. Not “I’ll love you if you give me good reactions” type of conditional on-stage love, but sincerely looking at them through the static of technical execution and seeing these strangers in all their human vulnerabilities and concealed stories, for even a brief moment at some point during the show. We sleepwalk through enough days in a daze on auto-pilot: this waking moment of seeing others lucidly would be as transcendental as a carp turning into a dragon.
2. I did a bad show! But took the hit gracefully and parryed to the dojo built of experience. Good shows build ego, bad ones build character.  
3. If I for a moment lost myself in the music of their reactions, the paintings of their facial expressions, the art of their existence. If I became one with them, with their joy as mine, I was alive 100 fold.
4. I walked away from a show learning of some previously unseen weakness, fault or shortcoming. Do I over-plan? Am I deaf in a conversation? Am I too serious? Why am I so serious? Do I perform to satisfy selfish desires of the ego? Any humbling pieces of self-knowledge discovered in the vivid moments of a performance or the quiet moments of practice can be used to become a better human. Becoming good is better than becoming good at.
5. I prayed before the show. Sometimes the most difficult or challenging shows make me pray. If I spoke to God in some manner of honesty or candid silence- preferably in just thanking rather than asking before the leap into the unknown of a gig- than I would deem the experience of great value. Art is a bridge to heaven.
6. I walked away from the show, good or bad, with inner peace. If the show did not leave me with the desire to get “better”, increase in skill, win something, or prove something, then I have won. True victory is self-victory.
7. I had fun. Magic is a real-life martial arts video game, and I played it without a care in the world, coming out of it years younger than I was going in.

Mages: what for you separates good from great shows?