Theatrical performance

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A theatrical performance describes the event of the scenic performance of a stage work in its specific staging .

A performance is an event in which two groups, spectators and actors, interact with each other. This event takes place at certain times in a certain place, which does not necessarily have to be located in appropriately established premises such as the theater, and is a particularly present and fleeting event. The performance is a product of collective artistic work directed by the director and supported by dramaturgy , set design , props , masks , stage technology , stage machinery , stage management and other functional areas.

Theater performances can take place with the means of spoken theater , dance theater , pantomime or as improvisational theater or impromptu comedy . When implemented using the means of musical theater , one usually speaks of opera or ballet performances (or operettas , musicals ). Since the Napoleonic theater decree of 1807, circus-like events are no longer considered to be theatrical performances. The theatrical performance usually takes place as the embodiment or animation of a text or freely in improvisational theater . In it there is an interaction between the original, actors, audience and the current context or zeitgeist .

The theater has been going through a “performative change” since the 20th century. The theater scholar Max Herrmann developed the concept of performance into a theoretical one around 1920 by understanding the performance detached from the literary text or drama and elevating it to an independent art form. A performance is a transitory event, because even if the specific staging is realized many times on the same stage according to the same staging text, each time a new, different relationship arises between actors and spectators and thus a unique performance.

The role of the spectator in a theatrical performance

The smallest unit that has to be fulfilled in order to be able to speak of theater is the presence of at least one actor and one spectator who watches him during the performance. The viewer therefore has a leading role within a performance, since this event could not have taken place without him. Although in the course of the performative change in recent decades there have been repeated theater situations in which the audience has been invited to participate in a wide variety of ways, the situation in contemporary theater continues to be that the audience is usually spatially away from the stage, on the the actors act, are separate and take their seats in the auditorium. Thus, the framework determines the character of the performance to a large extent with previously set role relationships and constitutes the most noticeable differences to other performance situations such as the performance . The audience remains in their seat for the duration of the theater performance and does not intervene, at least physically, in what is happening on the stage. However, he participates in a different way, in that his physical presence, perception, reception and specific reaction influence the course of the performance.

"Whatever the actors do has an impact on the audience and whatever the audience does has an impact on the actors and the other audience."

As a result of this interplay, the performance arises, so to speak, during its course, in which the audience experiences themselves not only as observers, but as subjects who are sometimes involved in the performance and at the same time allow themselves to be determined by the events. The viewer perceives what is happening on stage and interprets it with his or her individual horizon of experience, whereby each individual viewer adds an excess of importance to the performance, which it could not have shown on its own. In addition to the perception of something as something, in its self-referentiality, other associative meanings arise such as memories, feelings and thoughts of all kinds, which tend to invade the viewer than are predictable. In this act of uncontrollable interpretation lies the power of the viewer that co-constitutes the performance and turns theater into a space of experience. He is therefore a participating observer who creates connections through his gaze and gives what is represented an individual meaning. Max Herrmann describes this interaction of both groups as a "social game" in which everyone takes part in the event, whereby he primarily focuses on the actor's body and his play in space, as well as the interaction with the audience and the "dynamic process", that arises between the two, concentrated. The fact that, especially in the theater, what is represented takes place in the same space-time as the reception, in particular puts the viewer in a position to be a co-responsible part of the whole, as he could have interrupted what he was seeing at any time, for example.

literature

  • Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Aesthetics of the Performative, First Edition, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​2004
  • Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris, Warstat, Matthias, Metzler (Eds.), Metzlers Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2005
  • Paradoxes of looking - the role of the audience in contemporary theater, ed. Deck, Jack, Sieburg, Angelika, Trranscript, Bielefeld, 2008

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Aesthetics of the Performative, First Edition, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​2004, pp. 27–29.
  2. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, Erika, performance, In: Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris, Warstat, Matthias, Metzler (eds.), Metzlers Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2005, p. 16.
  3. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, Erika, performance, In: Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris, Warstat, Matthias, Metzler (eds.), Metzlers Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2005, p. 16.
  4. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, Erika, performance, In: Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris, Warstat, Matthias, Metzler (eds.), Metzlers Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2005, p. 18.
  5. ↑ Deck, Jan, foreword, In: Paradoxien des zu schauens - The role of the audience in contemporary theater, Ed. Deck, Jack, Sieburg, Angelika, Trranscript, Bielefeld, 2008, p. 5.
  6. ↑ Fischer-Lichte, Erika, performance, In: Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris, Warstat, Matthias, Metzler (eds.), Metzlers Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2005, p. 21.
  7. ↑ Deck, Jan, foreword, In: Paradoxien des zuzuauens - The role of the audience in contemporary theater, Ed. Deck, Jack, Sieburg, Angelika, Trranscript, Bielefeld, 2008, p. 17.
  8. ↑ Malzacher, Florian, There is a Word for People like you: Audience, In: Paradoxien des zu schauens - The role of the audience in contemporary theater, Ed. Deck, Jack, Sieburg, Angelika, Trranscript, Bielefeld, 2008, p. 17 .