What is performance, and why do I care?

We'll get to the "why do I care" part in a second, but let's start with:

What is Performance?

When I hear the word, I immediately visualize a theater with a house full of seats where the audience is seated, and a stage where the performers are plying their craft.  And in a typical week, a venue like that might have singers, dancers, actors, professional speakers, and people who are all-of-the-above cross the stage in the context of several concerts, plays or musicals.  Perhaps that is the baseline for defining performance.

But of course there are many other places and ways that performance takes place.  Movies.  Television  Busking.  Webinars.  Sales calls.  Speeches.  Phone calls.  Some of these are planned, some are improvised, some are live, and some are recorded for broadcast, but they all share some fundamental features.  They are all some kind of "organized communication" with a purpose.  Which is a great segue into:

Why do I care?

Because the fundamentals of performance touch on so many areas of life, nearly everyone can benefit from an understanding of "performance" and how it works, and how to be better at it.  Learn to convey a message as a singer, and it will make you a better speaker.  Learn to act, and you'll be a better singer.  Learn to dance, and you just might find physicality creeping into your acting!

So unless you live under a rock, start thinking about performance and how it might make your life better.