I am sitting here typing this post. Is this a performance in itself? It certainly is restored behaviour stemming right back from when I first learnt to write. As Schechner states, an action can have a certain “onceness” (2002, p.29) about it. This blog is specific to our contemporary experimental piece and contains only the writings of people involved in that school of thought. However, when we begin to break this behaviour down aspects start to emerge as definitive restored behaviours. For instance, writing, thinking and reading are all previously learned skills that are being applied here, the only thing that has changed is the context.

Erving Goffman goes on to describe how we can select a “particular participant and his performance as a basic point of reference”, to then determine who is the audience of this performance and who is a co-participant. Take this group blog for example, we are each contributing to the creation of a textual version of our performance. We are all audience members to each individual’s input, but at the same time we are all part of the same performance. During this process, the work of various performance artists such as Marina Abramovic and F.Uwe Laysiepen will become part of our research. Surely they too are co-performers, as their influence and work will help to stimulate our thoughts and ideas as a group. It makes you question whether any action or behaviour is unique to a certain person. When we say each person is unique, are we accurate in saying this? Or are we just “part of the machine” (2002, p.34) as Schechner describes? This concept suggests that we all play a certain role in forming a type of production line in life. On the contrary we all adopt or discard different versions of ourselves, depending on the situation. These transactions are of course carried out in our subconscious, in our opinion we are just being ourselves throughout life, but the detailed observation of what performance is challenges this statement. We alter our masks to match our perceived essence of ourselves. Our identity is ever-changing and we constantly conforming to social norms.

 

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Works Cited

Schehner.R(2002) Performance Studies: An Introduction, London:Routledge