Is it not the case that a performer, of whatever kind, who pays more attention to their audience’s expectations than their own performance, is likely to find it significantly more difficult – perhaps impossible - to give a convincing performance? Isn’t self consciousness the very enemy of good acting? The more a performer becomes disentangled from this feeling of being under scrutiny, the more they are likely to be able to be fully immersed in their role. Therefore anything that emphasizes the presence of the audience should be minimized and anything that encourages the performer to inhabit their role should be enabled. Perhaps this might explain why so many of the most interesting artists are not in the least interested in fishing for recognition but are simply getting on with what they love for its own sake. It’s that intrinsic motivation thing again.
In a response to a previous post, Sean writes: “in most professions, performance is everything.” Probably, but is this a good thing? - cars perform, stocks and shares perform, chemical compounds perform, trained elephants perform, actors perform, musicians perform. I’m mixing the two senses of the word “perform” here deliberately to make a point about how easy it is to confuse them. Certainly Sean means perform in the sense of “to carry out an action”, but the two senses of the word are so conflated in so many areas of contemporary life that something vital seems to be getting lost in the process. ‘Being’ is gradually becoming eclipsed. As society becomes ever more fascinated with celebrity over substance there appears to be an increasing valuing of performance over being; of ‘acting’ over doing and this preoccupation is spilling over into so many aspects of life that “performance is everything” or at least is seen as everything, which amounts to the same thing, which is to say appearance is everything.
One of my employers has recently changed the name of the annual staff Career Reviews. Previously these were called OSCRs (Objective Setting Career Reviews), whereas now they’re called EPRs (Employee Performance Reviews). We can all benefit from a little clear headed critical reflection sometimes, but the more emphasis is given over to appearances as opposed to actualities, the more we are likely to be tempted to cut corners, to embellish and even to deceive ourselves. As Sean himself has pointed out, it is indeed possible to polish a turd.
So should we be encouraging students to ‘perform’ as artists, doctors, engineers etc. or should we rather encourage them to fully inhabit what they choose to become? I don’t doubt that there’s a competitive, materialistic world out there with a few more egotistical posturing charlatans than we’d ideally like. In many ways that’s my whole point. But if this means encouraging students to become a bunch of narcissistic, competitive, selfish, careerist posers just to compete, you can count me out.