Whose performance is it anyway?

Do you perform for yourself, fellow players or for the audience? Are the audience just witnesses to your art or are they the reason you perform?

There may be a myriad of reasons why a person performs improv. Some people perform as a way to express their creativity, others perform because it’s fun, others because it’s social, others because it’s a career choice, others are challenging themselves in some way, others because they simply have to and for others a combination of these reasons and more.

So yes, if you perform improv you’ll be getting something out of it. However you are not who you perform for. When you step out on stage you enter into a social agreement with the audience – they will watch you and you will entertain them. You perform not just to the audience but for them as well.

If your focus is on yourself then you run the risk of your performance becoming self-indulgent. This extends to the group you’re performing with. It’s not about you as a group doing just what you want and paying no attention to how your work is coming across. You may be performing improv because you want to become more comfortable on stage but that’s your benefit, not the audience’s. Your job is to entertain. As a performer, you are in the service industry and you serve the audience.

Performing for the audience isn’t the same as pandering to the audience. You can still maintain your artistic integrity and expression AND you also need to adjust to the changing needs of an audience. The artistic process is iterative and if you want to keep performing then  you need be aware of these two dynamic factors.     

Simply put, if you ever find yourself wondering who you’re really performing for, keep this in mind: without an audience, your performance is just a rehearsal.