WHAT IS PERFORMANCE? from PERFORMANCE STUDIES BY RICHARD SCHECHNER

How does Richard Schechner (and other authors quoted) describe what a performance is? (4-5 sentences)

• Richard Schechner describes performance as a broad range of human actions that include ritual, play, sports, entertainment, and everyday behavior. He argues that performance is everywhere in social life, not just on stage, and that people are often performing even when they are not fully aware of it. For Schechner, performance involves both “doing” and “showing doing,” meaning actions are carried out and simultaneously presented to others. Other scholars he cites similarly emphasize performance as behavior that is framed, repeated, and culturally meaningful. Overall, performance is understood as an embodied act that produces effects on both the performer and the audience.

What are the nine kinds of performance? How is dance (or other performing arts such as theater, music, etc.) unique among all the other kinds of performance?

1. Habits, routines, and conventions

2. Art; theatre, music, dance, and performative art

3. Sports

4. Professions and jobs

5. Politics

6. Technology

7. Sex

8. Rituals

9. Play

• Dance and other performing arts are unique because they directly show what it is like to complete “showing doing”. It is also done very expressively and literally. Dance and other performing arts are not just representations, but the action itself. 

• They are more aware of performance. They are intangible. There is a show and a ritual to it, but then it is over.

Name which one is most likely followed by “is” a performance or can be analyzed “as” a performance (or both):

a) A group of nurses' treatment of their patients: “as” performance; healing 

b) A goalie’s play during a soccer game: both; entertainment 

c) A politician addresses climate change in their election speech: both; profession or job

d) A tarot card reader telling a client what the “cards say”: both; heal

e) An actress’s interpretation of the character Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare):  both; entertainment 

f) The premiere of a new series of paintings being set up in a museum exhibition: “as”; art

What is restored behavior, and how is it relevant to our understanding of culture? (describe in 3-4 sentences) Then, fill in the “film strip of behaviors” which could constitute as a restored behavior (such as a sequence of dance moves, a sequence of chores to clean the kitchen, or any sequence of actions that is considered a ‘typical’ sequence of actions for any type of cultural behavior)

• Restored behavior is the social actions of everyday life, and all of their occurrences, turned into a performance. These behaviors are our habits, rituals, and routines, but they are only restored if they have already been done once. Interestingly enough, all behavior is restored behavior because it's just bits and pieces of things that have already been performed before. Without this, performances would not be possible, which takes away identity markers, stories, and time warping. 

• Everything is a step-by-step performance

What are the seven functions of performance? Follow this by naming an example for each function and elaborating how this particular type of performance fulfills the function (could be from the reading, from class, or from personal knowledge)

1. To entertain - musicals: these are designed specifically to hold attention, create joy, and fulfill pleasure. 

2. To create beauty - Paint - whether you're painting an event that happened or a person who is sitting in front of you, painting tells a story that aesthetically pleases people. 

3. To mark or change identity - Joining a club: to be able to be a part of something that you were not before marks a change to new things.

4. To make or foster a community - Lantern festival: by creating an event and people showing up, you’re creating a bond that brings people together. 

5. To heal - Mom making me dinner: to heal is an action of care and love.

6. To teach or persuade - A friend advising you on how to handle a situation: teaching does not always need to be in a professional setting, and sometimes the best things are taught not in a classroom. By gaining knowledge in any way is to be taught. 

7. To deal with the sacred and the demonic - A Christian church service - This kind of performances address forces which are believed to exist beyond everyday life—gods, spirits, ancestors, or demons.

When studying or analyzing a dance, a ritual, or other cultural event “as” performance, what type of questions would a performance studies student/researcher ask?

A researcher in performance studies asks who is performing, for whom, and how the act is framed as performance. They examine what behaviors are being displayed and what meanings are constructed through the performance.