Philosophy of the Performing Arts

180 performance as art
provide a less than optimal way of conveying the distinctive aesthetic fea-
tures of the former. In this case, we don’t have two distinct artistic entities
that differ in their aesthetic properties: we have a single artistic entity and
two ways of gaining access to its aesthetic properties.
We might also ask how Thom or Osipovich can explain a work like Roof
Piece , where, fairly obviously, no audience could watch the entire perform-
ance. Thom claims that, in this case, “the performers collectively were an
audience of their performance. Maybe nobody saw everything that was done
to produce this performance, but the performers collectively saw it” (1993,
193). But this is puzzling. For it would need to be the case that the perform-
ers were each other’s intended audience. It seems very implausible, however,
to think that this was Brown’s intention, or the way in which the performers
thought of their actions. As Thom admits, part of the point of holding the
performance on the rooftops of Manhattan was to exclude the possibility of
an actual external audience addressed by the piece. Furthermore, if we do
allow this account of Roof Piece , why cannot the actors on stage in the empty
hall also count as the intended audience for their own performance? The
answer, again, is that while they are a possible audience for this performance,
they are not the intended audience whose anticipated responses shape the
performance.
While Thom’s and Osipovich’s arguments do not, I think, establish that
there can be a performance only in the presence of an actual audience, the
relationship between artistic performers and audiences is clearly more subtle
and intimate than the one between, say, athletes and spectators, and much
that they say on this question is insightful. We find complementary insights
in James Hamilton’s attempts to clarify what is distinctive not only about
the relationship between performing artists and an audience, but also about
this relationship as it exists in theater (2007, 50–53). Hamilton agrees with
Thom and Osipovich that interactions between performers and members
of an audience are a central element in theater, and he further agrees with
Osipovich that this distinguishes theater from the other performing arts.
What he terms “audience practice” – skill in presenting something to an
audience gathered for that purpose – is paradigmatic in theater but not in
dance and music: “Whereas playing music and dancing commonly can have
both audience and non-audience forms of practice, theatrical playing has
no common non-audience form of practice” (J. Hamilton 2007, 51). While
we find nothing strange in the idea of individuals dancing or making music
purely for their own enjoyment, it is difficult (though not impossible) to
envisage individuals doing this in the case of theater. In these respects, theater
is inherently social. As such, it also generally seeks to engage the audience
in distinctively complex ways: “Audiences watch, listen, and react to the-
atrical performers. Performers shape what they do with a view to the fact