I have always thought that the word ‘performance’ meant putting on a show to an audience. To have a performance you need a stage, performers and an audience. You need to be able to captivate your audience with what you do and say to entrance them. This would be putting on a good performance however I also believe a performance can be bad, for example something that hasn’t drawn me in and that I haven’t felt inspired and involved by. I think that a performance needs to be something that you can watch and are entertained by whether good or bad
However, the more I thought about the word ‘performance’ the more I thought how many different perspectives there are on the word, “Schechner unites several groups of performance under the same heading: play, games, sports, theatre, and ritual.” (Icosilune.com, 2018)
I only had ever thought of the word ‘performance’ being on stage but practitioner such as Schechner and Turner have opened my eyes, “they are not merely concerned with formal stage theatre, but neither do they stop only at other social dramas like religious rituals and games.” (Scribd, 2018)
These thinkers are inspired by Shakespeare’s, ‘theatrum mundi’, that perhaps all the world is a stage, “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one man in his time plays many parts.’” (2, 7: 139-42) These thinkers take Shakespeare’s idea quite seriously. Perhaps all events in everyday life, even the bad are all kinds of performances. Then in 1959 In Erving Goffman wrote a piece called The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life where he argued that each of us are in fact actors and we play certain roles to our audience, “each of us is an ‘actor’ who plays certain ‘parts’ in front of a believing ‘audience’ of colleagues, acquaintances, family and friends.” (Scribd, 2018) I had never thought this before exploring these theorist’s ideas. When I am around certain people I will act a certain way. I dress a certain way, walk a certain way and give off an air of confidence so my audience believe that I am a confident person, I am giving of a ‘front’, “Goffman called this disposition a ‘front’” (Scribd, 2018) However, when I am in the comfort of my own home in front of my family, I dress down and show my venerable side which my audience can’t see, I am back stage.
I then went onto think about even babies who are making funny faces or crying, they are aware of their audience and know that they are entertaining. They are performing to their audience. Social media is also a huge type of performance. People are acting like something they aren’t to their audience. On social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram people can post photos about their lives to their friends and followers, e.g., their audience. They can make their lives look incredible when in fact they may not be. This can make their audience think that their lives aren’t as good and can lead to depression. Many girls post confident photos of their flawless skin and bodies and post paragraphs about their amazing day when in reality they have probably used photoshop and are just sat at home, but they feel the need to have to act like something they aren’t to impress their audience.