¶ … Acting? The excerpts which explore what is acting tend to shed light on this often very perplexing issue. While many people can identify good acting vs. bad acting, few people can verbalize what makes some acting better than others. The first excerpt, by Antoine Artaud, fulfills exactly what the title elucidates, it explores acting as a specific form of athleticism: "the actor is an athlete of the heart" (133). The excerpts regarding Stanislavski's system explored much what this system is famous for: the actor being able to control his inspiration (5). This excerpt covers the Stanislavski system of using a method of physical action to control inspiration and subconscious emotions. The Stanislavski system discusses so heavily finding a way through the method to produce these genuine emotions to give birth to real people on stage, but I still feel that this can be a very opaque...

A play receives its echo from the audience" as stated by Harold Churman. This is indeed the truth. If anything, theatre is a shared experience. Without members of the audience, there is no theatre. Members of the audience are needed to bear witness or to receive what is being offered.
What is Performance?

The excerpts on what is performance view it from a myriad of perspectives, many of which overlap. For example, some scholars view it as cultural phenomenon, present to some extent with all creatures. Other scholars view it as…