Meta Performance
I wrote before about meta performance. When performing personal stories at Carapace, tellers give a staged performance based on social performance. Benjamin has also performed his Carapace origin story at another event.
I’ve told that story
on-stage about the first time at Carapace.
Like at Stories on the Square
I talked about my first Carapace.
As community members make Carapace a regular part of their lives, Carapace becomes part of their life stories. And in turn that makes it possible material for performed personal stories. This adds further layers to the performance of performance.
Going back to the idea of people performing “a hyperbolic version of themselves” as Shannon put it, what gets complicated is that a storyteller might faithfully perform at Carapace the same persona they perform out in the world, but that persona is still an act and Carapace is an event that privileges authenticity. Now, performance theory says that everyone is performing all the time, in a way that is fitting to the setting in which they find themselves. But maybe some people perform more than others? Maybe some people are less true to themselves in their social performances? Benjamin wondered, about one individual, whether they were ever off stage. In true performance theorist fashion (and in a shout out to Lady Gaga) I queried whether any of us are ever off stage. I take Benjamin’s point, though. Is it perhaps harder for performers to get off stage?
A few people never stop performing, on stage or in life. A few others don't perform at all, anywhere. And then, I think, you have everybody else. They move along the sliding scale, performing or not performing as the situation seems to require of them, or as they want to appear. I often think of, and talk to storytellers (and writers) about Pasty Rodenburg's book, "The Second Circle." She discusses how you can speak to others from a lecturing, talking-down, dictator, boss standpoint ... or you can not talk to them at all, or just barely, because you're completely absorbed in your own internal thoughts and feelings ... or you can find the in-between zone of those two, the second circle (which, interestingly, you can't know until you know the other circles), and speak directly, from there. Our best storytellers do that. I think the best people do, too.
ReplyDelete