On performance

Every time you get in front of an audience of people, you’re performing. it took me awhile to adjust to the fleeting, temporary nature of performing. You can’t edit it. You have to be in the moment. Now I enjoy literary readings, because each one presents a unique challenge. A chance to get real. And to reveal.

Marina Abramovic explains how a performer must be 100 per cent present during a performance to make sense and convey meaning:

“Performance is the moment when the performer… steps in front of the audience in a particular time. This is not theatre. Performance is the real. Theatre you can cut with a knife and there is no blood. The knife is not real and the blood is not real. In performance the blood and the knife and the body of the performer are real.”

One thing that people often say when giving performance and reading advice is to tell jokes. Be warm and personable. Smile. I think that’s important, but I also think that depending on what you’re trying to do, and the material you’re presenting, that doesn’t always have to be the case.

“It’s very hard to make a strong, illuminating work of art,” says Abramovic. “I’m very interested in the ideas I really feel about. I’m really interested in the ideas that change something or make me learn something. If you do things you like or you have pleasure doing, you never change.”