Theory, Theory, Theory

After reading Carlson, Rayner and States, I realized that there is so much more that encompass theatre, than what we generally perceive. Not only that, but that performance is going on all around us all the time, whether we acknowledge and define it as performance or not.   My biggest question or spark of thought in this particular round of readings is:

 Is performance defined by the awareness of the performer and acknowledgment of the audience? Or is a performance not consensual, meaning, is it a performance if we aren't aware that someone is watching?

The answer to this question above, could be answered in Carlson's work. Carlson talks about performance in everyday actives, emphasizing that the audience judges if a task is done well, lets say for example, parallel parking. We may be trying to park our car on a city street trying to wedge our cars into place, as a security guard across the way watches to see if the driver parks the car correctly or not. Carlson makes a point that this could be considered a performance, and that classifying a performance is not the responsibility of the performer, but of the observer.  Carlson also talks about the double consciousness of a performer in a performance, that not only are we aware of the audience themselves, but also that we are aware of the performance from the performers point of view. Carlson uses the analogy of the basketball player being interviewed after a game, the commentator has an opinion of how the game went, but they also ask for a self assessment of the game from the players perspective, this almost makes it feel as if it is a dual performance, for the spectators and the athlete.

States, kind of blew my mind, too many big words there, however, I found his thoughts on phenomenology and semiotics to be interesting, and that for art, and more specifically theatre, we need to have a balance of both phenomenology and semiotics. Looking at this balance as a binocular vision, and if we don't look through these glasses, we end up weighing the scale to much on either end. States gives a great example of this with taking the bus home, mixing in what we see everyday and the emotional response we can have to our surroundings. As we had mentioned in class, if we all looked at the world strictly phenomenologically we would have a mental breakdown. This I think is a great way to describe character work, finding enough semiotic relation to your audience but also endow a character with enough phenomenological perspective, that we audience can empathize with the character and hopefully spark an emotional response in the viewer.

Alice Rayner was probably the most intense read, and I will forever look at props in a holy way. As an actor I tend to forget the significance of props, and as Rayner suggests, the transformation from object to a thing. I especially liked the reference to the old building that had furniture that artists hung from the ceiling, these things had their own story and their own point of view. The props dictate the response from the audience just as much as the actor does.

There are so many elements of theatre to analyze, but I should probably say, so many elements of life to analyze, as it seems that our daily life is a ongoing performance, whether we are alone, on stage, or parking our car.