Performance Space Analysis

How important is performance space to performance?

The question of performance space 's importance in conveying meaning and guiding audience response is complicated. First we must define the term "performance space". In a broader sense, it can refer to venue, which in the case of site-specific artists such as Shunt, means performance space is indeed central to the construction and context of meaning. Venues also come with their own sets of conventions and coding, which may alter the reading of a performance. On a smaller scale, it is a defining of areas between audience and performer, therefore having a more proxemics based analysis.

There is a tendency throughout history to establish a norm of performance space. This has meant in general,
The performers later indicated that they had expected the audience to leave during the stillness at the "end" of the piece, as it was intended to become an installation art work, which the audience would in their own time tire and move on from. The vast majority of audience members remained in their seats, showing that they were adhering to the learned conventions of modern theatre attendance; they stayed quietly in their seats until indicated by the performers (through curtain calls, for example) or their technical staff (by opening the exit doors, turning up the house lights or giving cue for applause) that the performance was over. Winter was read as a theatre piece, solely due to its performance space.

Venue can also engage senses that are otherwise hard to stimulate. During the performance of Tropicana , I was acutely aware of my sense of touch ;the walls were damp, and often crumbled slightly to the touch. The venue also had distinctive smell of mould. The slimy, unpleasant feelings these created were consciously used within the piece and added to the sense of sensory overload the work was trying to create. These senses are rarely triggered by the performers themselves, leaving venue alone as the main stimulation for two out of five
The distance also created a sense of "receiving" the production,. I was more inclined to intellectually analyse and consciou1sly deconstruct than to "feel" the performance and become absorbed by its journey.

Tropicana redefined its performance space on several occasions, often with no distinction between audience and performance space. being within the performance, in a sense as a performer oneself, left the audience unsure how to react. Many of the piece 's early comic moments were not laughed at, as the audience were unsure of their role. When , in the second half, we were directed onto conventional tiered seating, the audience were much more willing to laugh at jokes, to "aaah" at the rejection of one of the characters and to talk amongst themselves, due to the return to theatre norms.

Exactly how important a tool performance space is varies considerably with the objectives of the work; Shunt actively seeks to reflect venue through performance, and the piece performed in any other setting would produce far different decodings and responses than were originally intended. With less site-specific works, the link between audience and performance space is less obvious in a venue sense. Yet there is no space that does not add some coding to work performed within it. Even contemporary "black box" spaces convey colour symbolism and expectations of post