ABSTRACT
Performance usually assumes framing. Those frames are either provided institutionally, as in a clearly framed stage and audience separation in a theatre, school hall or other assembly space; or they are created by the actors, dancers, performers. Some separation is necessary to delineate between what is performed on the one side, and what is experienced by the audience on the other. The framing is a process whereby separation occurs at the same time as preserving the possibility of communication between the performer and the audience. In ‘naturally’ occurring situations, children and adults might gather round a story teller in a semi-circle, two, three or more deep; they might, as a crowd, stand before a speech-maker who is standing on a box; a crowd might gather in a circle around a street performer in a city square; in a rather different example, people might gather in a circle around a bonfi re. In each case, a frame is created that sets up an ambient tension between what is inside the frame and what is outside it. Where the people actually form the frame itself (as in many naturally occurring situations) they are participating in the creation of the art experience: their faces turned towards the performance, their backs forming a permeable barrier against the outside world. That barrier can be permeated by others joining the frame, like children who work their way to the front (shepherded by adults) to be able to see what is happening. The frame adjusts itself accordingly. It is a dynamic part of the experience of performance.
