What is the Role of the Performer?

    Questions where the answer is in the asking are vexatious to me at first glance.  The performer's role is to perform.  Be that in singing, acting, dancing.  Their job is to put on a performance.  But what is that?  What is a performance?

    That is where my wheels started turning.  The job of the performer is to elicit a response from us, the audience.  Whether it's love, elation, sadness, or even hate, it's their job to induce these feelings in us.  They don't have to write it, but if they don't generate a response from us there's no reason to pay them any attention and they fade away.   

This ain't musical yet, but we'll get there.  Take Delores Umbridge for example.  At a glance, she's not unattractive, pleasantly dressed, well quaffed, polite, mousey.  But from this one frame we all know we hate her pink guts.  Why?  Because Imelda Staunton PERFORMED the hell out of that role.  She took that script and made it her bitch like Umbridge tried to make the school.  She made us want to cry.  She made us angry.  She made us want to stomp her to death.  Some wanted her dead more than Voldemort (Griffeth, 2019.)

    That was Staunton's job.  To draw anger and hatred from the audience, with her performance.  Rowling thought the character up and put her on paper.  The screenwriters wrote a character for the movie.  But Staunton is the one that filled us with palpable revulsion.  We would all collectively curb stop Umbridge if given the chance.  This indicates that Staunton executed her job to perfection.

    Here's part of a performance that had been brewing for most of my life, since Hugh Jackman first grew claws.  

      Jackman, without even speaking, made me feel sad and tired, and nearly brought me to tears.  Again, it ain't musical yet, but the texture is raw and sharp, like newly crushed glass and it will cut you.  Then the bastard speaks and I started bawling, and all he did was fail, twice, to say more than "It's got water."  And in seconds he had me laughing when he lost his tempter and started beating on his truck.  I empathize, my Dodge is on its third transmission and this isn't a buyer's market so I'm disinclined to try to upgrade at this time.  That is the role of the performer.

    This is a disparate performance from the prior shown.  The range of this man!  He's an action savage, a dancer, and he can sing.

    It isn't just a fast paced rhythm, it's the hard and deep tonality of the whole song that brings forth feelings of hope!  Excitement!  Anticipation!  Was Jackman the sole source?  No!  There was the instruments, couldn't be done without them.  There were background singers, the dancers they all contribute to the high energy of the main body of the song.  Did Jackman select the wardrobe for himself and everyone else?  No, and appearance has an integral part in the reaction an audience has to the performers (Lehman, Sloboda, Woody, 2007).  But they're peripheral, Jackson is the center piece and he beats those feelings from us!  But, at the end when nearly the entire expression of the performance fades away, when everyone disappears and the lights dim and we're left with only a sad confused Jackman, their absence combines with his loneliness to exacerbate the feeling of emptiness.  

    Another example below, where Zack Efron also does very well, and in the background a subtle yet under appreciated and absolutely necessary bar tender.

 

    Couldn't be done without the bar tender, and he didn't even say a word.  But he rocked it.  The absence of the bartender would have severely detracted from the structure of this scene.  And when this comes on Pandora when I'm on the stationary bike, the expression of the song is incomplete.  It must be watched to be fully appreciated in its complete form.  The melody can keep me running, but imagining the mute mixologist is inevitable.  

    The role of the performer is to force us to forget our own selves for at least a moment, and to make us feel something else.  They do this by taking a song, or a script, and showing us those words.  Not reading them to us, but putting them on high display for us, by taking us on the ride, with their face, their inflection, their movements.  I was a grown ass man when I first saw Logan.  I'd witnessed the birth of my three children and helped my wife recover from the birthing.  I'd harvested countless animals, answered horrible 911 calls and sent help, knowing that the response could at best only provide comfort for those remaining.  I'd lost family and friends.  And just standing there Logan had me near tears.  Then the bastard spoke.  That is the role of the performer.  

Griffeth, Jessica. “‘I WANTED HER DEAD MORE THAN VOLDEMORT’: EXAMINING PEOPLE’S HATRED OF DOLORES UMBRIDGE.” Digital Commons USU, Utah State University, May 2019, digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2414&context=gradreports.

IMDb.com. (2007, July 11). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. IMDb. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0373889/?ref_=nm_knf_t_2

Twentieth century fox home entertainment. (2017). Logan. Milano.

Gracey, Michael, director. The Greatest Showman. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2018. 

Lehmann, Andreas C., John A. Sloboda, and Robert H. Woody, 'The Performer', Psychology for Musicians: Understanding and Acquiring the Skills (New York, 2007; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146103.003.0009, accessed 16 Nov. 2023.