4.3 The lives and times of performance

By Tony Gardner (pp.102-110)

• The time in which the work can be experienced by an audience is not the control of that audience: being there fundamentally means being there at the right time.

• The audience appears to give up individual control of time as part of the basic contract of live theater and submits to the “shared time” of the performance.

• “Live performance exists in the present, and human beings have a need to be present in this life”. (McBurney)