In one of our last seminars, we were asked to discuss about key things that we have learnt so far on this module that we have found interesting or wish to research further. I discussed the seemingly simple point of, why do we perform?  This question has fascinated me for so long, and is possibly one of the contributing factors as to why I am sat here now blogging for my university degree in drama. Everyday we perform, we perform in front of one another all the time. It is from this point that we can also begin to question what is performance. At first glance, a person might not recognize that simply going to your favorite restaurant, is a opportunity for performance and yet it happens and will happen every time you enter an establishment of that sort. There is a certain set of guidelines you have to follow in order to function in society, an unwritten law that we are shepherded to obey, but why?

To try and fathom why I have been reading The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman. So far I have found the reading enlightening . I completely agree with his points about when an individual portrays himself in a certain way, he is asking that person to ‘believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess.’ (Goffman,1959 p, 28) And that that, in conjunction with a person’s appearance, they do to gain a higher (or in some cases lower) status than the person they are performing for. For example a customer may enter a restaurant and sit straight down at an unclean table. Here the customer is in charge as he is undermining the waiter’s authority. However if the waiter then comes over and asks to clear the table, it is socially unacceptable for a customer to sit at a table that is not clear of plates. Therefore the customer must answer ‘yes’ and therefore the power shifts as the customer gives in to the requests of the waiter. Perhaps this idea of power ans status is something to be played around with in our ‘Apple’ performance.

Goffman also goes on to explain how friendships are formed, if we are all pretending to be characters. ‘When an individual or performer plays the same part to the same audience on different occasions, a social relationship is likely to arise.’ (Goffman, 1959, p 27) However I’m not sure this metaphor works in terms of the theater and performance. As my belief is that if you performed a play over and over again to the same audience they would eventually get bored of a performance rather than warm to it. Of course though I am aware that the theatrical world and society are two separate matters, but Goffman does try to connect them as much as possible and through reading his work I wished he didn’t and focused more on performance outside the theatre environment. Still this book is a very useful resource when looking at social ideologies.

Another point that I have found interesting and this case useful to our practical work, is the work of Fiona Wilkie. She has identified site-sympathetic, site-generic and site-specific performance and ‘…challenges notions of easy congruence between performance and site, ‘that the fit may not be comfortable merging with the resonances of the site but might be a reaction against them.’ (Pearson, 2010, p 8) Our performance is site-eventful as our stage is the Gravity Fields Festival. It is also site-generic as we believe we could perform our piece anywhere, all we would need was 101 apples.