The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance states ” by most definitions, the audience and/or the spectator fundamentally constitute theatre and performance by witnessing it and at least partially producing its meaning (Allain,2006 p.132). With reference to our performance the question is who produced the meaning? It could be the words that were spoken by the performers, as they formed the textual context. The imagination of the participant however was the key component in associating these words with a meaning. The origins of this derived from their subconscious and preconceptions that were based on past experiences with a beach or a party etc. The next step is to ascertain who was the audience, generally they are the people that observe and watch what is going on. Firstly, the performance was in the audience member’s subconscious, therefore not visible. This reinstates the reason as to why we chose to take away their sight because what we were attempting to find out did not rely on sight, only the perceptions relied on vision. We wanted to find a true representation of the meaning of the text.

The meta-performance consisted of us, as the performers multi-tasking and timing our movements around the box during the performance. This included creating sound effects with props, for instance using water bottles that were half-full to conjure the sound of the waves at the beach, drawing on the box with chalk and speaking the text through the microphones.In relation to this aspect of the performance we were the performers and the audience member was in the box, however they were not watching they were ‘experiencing’ the world through various other senses. Allain questions whether “audiences consistently do the same thing… and if this is active or passive” (2006, p.132). The contents of the subconscious is different in everyone, therefore the performance was certainly unique each time. The debate is if the audience were reacting the same each time or not. Our actions remained fairly similar in each performance, outside of the box that is. We were onlookers into the imagination, the sublime. I believe the performer-spectator relationship changed when they left the box and we showed them the drawings on the box. This shifted the participant into being the audience and observing the interpretation of us as the audience to the performance in their imagination.

Meta-performance

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 Works Cited

Allain, Paul et al (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance, Oxon:Routledge