What is Performance...HMMM...?

When I started reading Marvin Carlson's introduction to Performance: A Critical Introduction, entitled "What is Performance?", I immediately found my self pondering on the very essence of the question. My initial definition was that performance was any display of an artistic form. An art form that could range from acting, singing, dancing, etc. What I didn't initially infer was that performance could be an essentially contested concept, which means that performance is just a concept, developed in an atmosphere of “sophisticated disagreement” by participants who “do not expect to defeat or silence opposing positions, but rather through continuing dialogue to attain a sharper articulation of all positions and therefore a fuller understanding of the conceptual richness of performance. (Carlson 1 and 2) Although this phrase was based off of Mary Strine, Mary Hopkins, and Beverly Long's observation, it doesn't concretely solidify what performance is. It simply expresses what performance has come to. This idea is one of many that Carlson explores in aims of discussing the varied ways in which performance has been interpreted. 

Carlson's emphasis on ideas/theories regarding theatrics and the presentation of it through performance art, made me contemplate even harder on the original question...What is Performance? He explores the traditional view of what makes something performative; the physical presence of trained or skilled human beings whose "demonstration of their skills" is the performance. (Carlson 3)  He discuses Richard Schechner's idea of "restored behavior". This idea focuses on the distance between "self" and behavior in comparison to the distance between an actor and the role the actor plays on stage. Thus this a form of performance, where there is a display not necessarily of skills, but rather of a recognized and culturally coded pattern of behavior. (Carlson 4) His third  performance ideal is the one that struck me the most because it discussed the idea of performance involving a consciousness of doubleness. With this idea it says that the actual execution of an action is placed in mental comparison with a potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model of that action. He then adds to this that performance is always performance for someone, some audience that recognizes and validates it as performance even when...that audience is the self. (Carlson 5 and 6) This struck me because it made me decipher between the audience observing a performance and what is the line between performing and doing which is supposedly consciousness. If an actor that performs for an audience is conscious of the fact that they are performing and also performing for someone, does this then make that performance truthful? Because I always inferred that more consciousness equated to less theatrical truth. I also thought that more consciousness caused a diminished presence for the performer. So I have pondered deeply with this last ideal because although it makes sense it clashes with the ideals that I feel represent theatrical truth or good theater. But I guess it all depends on the performer and the audience.

The audience to performer relationship is pivotal because if an actor becomes overly conscious of their audience, it can either add or subtract from their performance. An example of this would be in Peter Brook’s The Empty Space where the audience in Europe heavily influenced the actors performance because they were a “good audience”. (Brook 24)

I would have to say that my idea of what makes a performance and what makes a performance good is quite opaque still, but what I am happy to know is that its not necessarily about emphasizing on what performance is, but rather the general use of the term itself and how its utilization can foster varied meaning.