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between theater and performance. I can’t every detail about how the art of
theatre is practice also exists in other forms of performance that are not called
theatre. Everything I examined from the theory of practice, to the physical
locations and application of theatre to effect change also exist in performance. There is one and only one difference I feel
confident divides the two.
interesting distinctions between an action that is executed “as” performance
and an action executed that “is” performance. Performance can be a part of
ritual ceremony and legal process. This is even more clarified in Austin’s
writing on performative utterances. Austin describes how the words “I do” at a
wedding are spoken in a performative way, and they help complete the wedding
ceremony. Austin also points out that ceremonies like weddings and christenings
(of ships) also include paperwork and legal actions, so they have a binding
contract, and create a lasting change in the lives of the parties involved. A couple
at the wedding becomes married, a ship is officially named and will be identified
as such to all seafaring vessels and nations of the world. These are examples of performance as ritual,
and performance as legal ceremony.
of the participants is the one thing I believe separates theatre from other
performance. Theatre does not function in the form of theatre as performance. A performance of theatre is executed with a series
of implied social agreements between all the participants both performers and
audience members. The most binding of these agreements is that the play will
not create a lasting binding change in the participants’ lives. In other words
there is an implied agreement that what the participants are engaged in is not
real, it does not exist beyond the final curtain. This is not say that theatre doesn’t
have lasting emotional effects on audience or performers. Nor am I saying that
theatre can not be applied as a tool to persuade people and inspire social
change. But I am saying that even theatre as a tool for change does create that
change beyond the temporary world of the play created by the performers and
audience for the duration of time it is created.
What about
guerrilla theatre? When performers pop out on an unsuspecting audience? While
guerilla theatre plays with the convention by performing outside traditional
locations, and often without a clear announcement that the performance is about
to occur, it often clearly and stylistically informs observers that they are seeing
something that is theatre through the performers craft. I think Antonin Artaud used the best metaphor
equating theatre to the plague. Among other things medically the plague
unleashes the body’s potential to destroy itself. For something to be theatre it
must something where the act of performing it unleashes its self-destruction. Unlike
say a sports event like a football game or a wedding ceremony, Theatre must undo
itself. The fact that the LSU Tigers won the 2020 National Championship did not
undo itself when the last quarter ended. As the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
does when the actors rise from their graves and take a bow.
play is not reality, and that at the end the world will be unchanged by the
events witnessed on stage, is the distinction that separates theatre from performance.
Though some performance will align itself with these agreements other
performance is a part of rituals and ceremonies that do not share the agreement
of unreality.