What makes great art, what makes a great performance? When the art or the performance expresses something – a human experience, a feeling, an atmosphere/environment, an emotion – that resonates and strikes a chord with the audience, perhaps that could be great art or a great performance. The artwork or the performer is the medium through which the censored/suppressed emotions of the audience is released. The audience sits silent, looks on in silence, but through the artwork or the performer, their emotions get released.
The artwork or the performer then is also a connector. A connector that can gather and unite a group of strangers – for two seconds, for three hours – to take part, to sit through, to engage in, to feel, to breathe with, and to find release. After the attention of these strangers, eyeballs glued to the art or to the performer – for two seconds, for three hours – then comes the applause, then congratulations. Congratulations for work well done on the part of the artwork and the performer, but also for the audience themselves, having participated in the livening-up of the art and of the performance. Then the audience goes home, having found their emotional release and employed their sympathetic and empathetic minds and hearts. The artwork stays where it is, in the darkness, until the next day comes when they enter into another engagement with another group of strangers. The performer goes home, retreating from the brightness of the stage lights, the adrenaline rush that is enabled by living and breathing live performances, shedding the role of the meeting-point, the emotional release medium, the connector. The performer slips back into their normal lives, back to their normal selves, recharging their batteries in the mundane world before they return to the theater and do it all over again.
Does the perception of art and performance only exist in the audience`s minds? The artwork and performer are active components of the live experience, so the projection and prolongation of art and of performance survives only through the audience´s memories?