6.4–Key Components of a Performance

With some exceptions, the majority of plays you will read in a literature class were designed to be performed. This means that in addition to considering the actual words in the script, you also should consider elements of performance.

The Audience

Arguably, what makes a play a play is the specific interaction between performers and an audience that observes their actions. Even when an audience sits quietly in seats separate from a stage, their collective response still influences the performance. If you have seen a live performance, you’ve likely seen what happens when an actor delivers a particularly funny line. The audience laughs, and the actors pause for that reaction before continuing.

An audience also allows for one of the most common dramatic elements that you’ve likely seen elsewhere in literature: irony. Dramatic irony is a specific form of irony common to the theater wherein the audience knows something that the characters do not. Dramatic irony can take several forms, including audience foreknowledge of the ending (the tragic hero dies at the end) or something more immediate, such as when a villain like Iago or Richard III says something that has an innocuous meaning to the characters on stage but a sinister meaning to the audience who knows that they’re up to no good.

The Space

The dramatic space further shapes the play and how it can be performed. Classical Greek theater, for instance, was performed in large semi-circular amphitheaters. The space design had phenomenal acoustics, meaning that performers speaking in normal volumes on stage could be heard at the topmost levels. The large space also meant that things we often associate with modern performance (such as subtle facial expressions or movements) could not be viewed by the majority of the audience. The Greeks therefore utilized more gross body movement and masks to convey meaning.

When we think of plays today, we typically think of an indoor stage that has one section open to a normally quiet (unless they’re laughing or gasping) seated audience. This style of stage is called a proscenium stage, which has one side open to the audience; the other three sides are only available to the actors and set crew and are not intended to be viewed. In this format, the actors are viewed as performing in a “box” or walled-off space. Therefore, when they directly address the audience or acknowledge the meta-theatrical space outside of the stage, this act is called breaking the fourth wall.

In other theatrical spaces, the lines between performers and audiences are further blurred. Certain performance spaces will have thrust stages (stages that extend into the audience space and are surrounded by the audience on three sides—Shakespeare’s Globe is an example of such a stage), be outdoors (warm-weather performances like Shakespeare in the Park are popular examples of these; large amphitheaters or arenas also fall into this category, albeit on a much larger scale), or be in small interior spaces like black box theaters. All of these spaces offer their own challenges and advantages, and certain plays are better suited to some spaces than others. For instance, a play meant to enhance a feeling of claustrophobia and tension such as Marsha Norman’s ’Night Mother is more effective in a small, intimate space where the audience is in close proximity to the actors than it would be in a large arena or performance hall.

The script often offers useful cues as to how the playwright originally expected the play to be performed. In addition to stage directions or other paratextual cues, playwrights will often include dialogue that addresses the performance space and its limitations. Famously, in Shakespeare’s Henry V, the Chorus apologizes for the sudden shifts in location, asking them to imagine that they are now on a battlefield in France.

The Performer(s)

Performers make meaning. Earlier, we mentioned that part of what can make reading a play difficult is that the content is almost entirely dialogue. However, as many a play reader knows, watching a play being performed often makes what was obscure much clearer as the language is suddenly accompanied by other elements that help us contextually understand what is going on. Beyond simply reading the words, performers (usually in consultation with each other, a director, or other individuals producing a performed version of a play) also act as interpreters. As a reader, you will also fall into this role.

How may a performer affect the meaning and reception of a play? Even if they are not granted a large amount of autonomy by a director, actors are responsible for doing more than just reading lines. A performer will use their body and their voice to direct the audience’s attention; beyond that, they will cue the audience in on what the intended reaction should be through their interactions with other performers or the audience’s own expectations for human behavior. A talented actor can even convey the direct opposite meaning of the written text. In her final speech in The Taming of the Shrew, Kate, who has been abused and gaslit by her husband Petruchio, talks about the importance of women being subservient to their husbands. In this speech, a performer could present Kate as psychologically broken by her husband’s abuse; a performer could also wink and speak sarcastically, showing that they are still very much in control; the performer could also offer some interaction with Petruchio, signaling that they are both in on the joke. All of these options and many more have been done with this scene and thus speak to the importance of the performer in letting the audience know what the preferred interpretation of events should be.

In terms of movement, an actor may use conventional or stock gestures as shorthand to convey meaning, especially in instances where an audience may not be able to clearly see more subtle body language. This approach differs from film, in which techniques such as close up shots draw deliberate attention to an actor’s smaller movements.

Finally, performers may also use improvisation to further enhance a given performance. Most common in theater where a cast puts on the same show for long periods at a time, improvisation is the practice of performers deliberately going off script, usually either to adjust for an error or to make the audience (or a fellow performer) laugh. These often-unintentional additions to the play become an integral part of that particular performance, further allowing it to be a truly unique instance of the text.

Time

Even when a play follows a set script with no deviations or changes made by a director or performer, a performance is nevertheless a unique event unto itself that cannot be exactly repeated. Therefore, plays are particularly apt at being read in two modes: the literary mode that we’ve been covering throughout this textbook and the performance mode. When thinking in terms of “literature,” it may help to envision performances as distinct texts unto themselves and adaptations of a script. These adaptations are no more or less important than the original script and often take on different resonances and meaning by simple virtue of being presented in a certain time or place that may not have been considered by their original author.

Another facet of plays is that they (unless they are extremely experimental) are bound by human time. This amount may be short (such as Tom Stoppard’s The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, to the “two hours traffic of our stage,”^[1] to day- or even days-long performances. The two-part Angels in America (first performed 1991) by Tony Kusher clocks in at approximately seven and half hours, and classical Japanese “Kabuki performances originally began about three o’clock in the morning and did not conclude until dusk.”^[2]