Performance & Performing
Our "Kiss Me, Kate" rehearsal Wednesday night# went pretty well, about where we should have been with two days to go and a few details to brush up. For me it was good because I finally remembered all my lines at all the right times, as well as lyrics and dance steps. All this was done through the expediency of some practice and keeping lots of things in my head. In addition to the lines and lyrics and dance steps, there are the mental meta-thoughts, aides-to-memory for keeping lyrics in the right order, counts and step names to keep dance steps sorted out, and personal admonitions about lines that never seem to come out right but will if one keeps thinking things like "cross right and raise the upstage arm" while speaking blank verse from Shakespeare with an ironic modern twist, and say "sister"instead of "daughter".
I think the audience doesn't realize — nor should they realize! — that while they're enjoying a seamless spectacle of acting and singing and dancing, we performers are thinking things like "step-touch-step, pas de bourée, point, point, point, point" (a passing moment in "Too Darn Hot"), with lots of mental "five, six, seven, eight", not to mention my silently practicing the word "quaff, quaff, quaff" just before I shout "Let's quaff carouses to this gentleman!" because it would never quite come off my lips as recognizably English in previous rehearsals. I'm one of the three "suitors" who sing "Tom, Dick, or Harry"*, a novelty number we get through accurately only by mentally reciting counts and steps and hand positions while singing a quick succession of words in four-part harmony.
My point will be more or less obvious by this time: the audience is immersed in the performance, but the performer is immersed in performing, and the two are quite different ways of experiencing the same events.
I perform musically at the church where Isaac is music director with some regularity; sometimes I play 'cello, sometimes I sing, sometimes I'm a substitute hand-bell ringer. It all gives me lots of opportunity to sit in the chancel and watch the congregation watch me and the other performers, which includes the scripture readers, the deacon, and the minister, and think about the differences between performing and the performance.
The audience expects to see — and deserves to see — a performance that shows no seams, shows no signs of being performed. A good performance appears what it pretends to be, rather than what it actually is.
On the other hand, the performers rarely experience a performance the same way. The job of the performer is to create the seamless performance experience for the audience. Now, that may seem rather obvious, but people sometimes forget it and believe that the performers are just somehow doing what they appear to be doing without thinking much about it. It doesn't really hurt for the audience to think that — it can be part of the effect the performance creates, making it look effortless and natural, nothing really special — but woe betide the performer who falls into that trap and gives a sloppy, unprepared, untidy performance. The audience may not know exactly what went wrong, but they will feel that the show didn't really come off quite right.
Sometimes there's not a big difference between what the performer appears to be doing and what the performer actually is doing. Musicians usually have rather little in the way of stage theatrics or performance logistics to worry about and can mostly concentrate on performing their music, but there are a few fiddly bits. Not surprisingly, there's more for actors and exhibition dancers and figure skaters and opera singers to do to make their performance seem "natural". And don't forget the preacher mentioned above, who is also giving a performance.
I think this difference between performance and performing came most starkly into my mind one night, some years ago, when we were doing a staged performance of a review of Rogers & Hammerstein songs called "A Grand Night for Singing". There was a love duet going on on-stage. Part way through that number the chorus popped out to sing ethereal "oohs" and "aahs" in lovely, atmospheric harmonies. We had arranged it so that groups of three heads popped out from behind flats sort of in totem-pole fashion, one above another above another.
The audience found it surprising, slightly humorous, charming, and tenderly romantic. What I saw from my vantage point behind the flats was a group of middle-aged singers trying to get themselves positioned for this popping-out routine. It required people on hands and knees, people squatting, people leaning precariously over each other, all of us holding onto something or someone so that the whole lot of us didn't fall onto the stage.
Of course, the audience saw none of this, and that was our goal. We were temporary contortionist performers in pursuit of creating a magical performance moment for our audience.
I laughed heartily about it later, though.
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#I started this rumination nearly six months ago when our theater group was just about to do its first performance of "Kiss Me, Kate!" It's taken me awhile to get back to finishing it, but let's not worry over much about just when "last Wednesday" was. Here's a backstage moment: the chorus was waiting backstage and I was making a note or two for this piece; one of the others asked me about it. I explained that I was writing about the differences between "Performance & Performing". She gave me a look that said "hmm, deep."
*Whose lyric "dick, dick, dick, dick, a-dick a-dick, dick, dick, dick" provides another datum in our examination of subliminal gay messages in the lyrics of Cole Porter.