Performance simulation

There are still those who debate the problem of "presence" in performance and slide into the seductive solution of a duality of simulation and live performance, as if liveness implies an authenticity or a simulation of a different order than its reproduced form.

It is not for me to demonstrate the similarity between presence and simulated presence. I will stand by the notion that in terms of perception they are nearly equal, bar the emotional enthusiasm we supply to the perception of a live performance, and the possible psychological effect of interaction with a "good" or a "bad" audience that the performer may thrive on or be crushed by.

Instead I am interested in the implication of performance as a simulation. If we accept that film as a medium is merely structurally different (I use the term loosely) from live theater, then surely the following enaction is interesting rather than disruptive or intrusive (real/illusory become false dichotomies):

Suppose a movie is playing in a movie theater, but instead of the actors on-screen the camera occasionally focuses on members of the audience (this location is necessary insofar as the suspension of disbelief must be within easy grasp of a novice to this new form of theater-film). The movie content will be manipulated for this same reason. Perhaps a new horror in which horrible scenes happen in dark music halls and cinema theaters. That is adequate.

In the next instance, actors in the audience act out what is happening on the screen. The audience is expected to know that they are actors once this starts happening.

According to the laws of film, viewers have now looked at representations of their selves presently located on the film. The present has become simulated. (Film mirrors some imagineable part of the simulating mind, and once the mind has been led to believe the action is taking place in the theater itself, their body has become participant to their viewing experience).

Next the screen may become transparent to reveal actors in the background as another audience (this screen can move into the ceiling so that actors move freely but should come back down for the finale explained further down). Then they may act out something altogether incomprehensible, such as a seance in which a candle is placed on a screen and the horrible scene of earlier is played out on another screen behind them.

This act should have a quiet or dark beauty to it. It has to be captivating. (And the film-performance should be cheap - £2 to see.)

Whatever simple plot plays itself out in the meantime is immaterial. Perhaps everything can happen in 15 minutes, from beginning to end.

As a finale the initial scene should be repeated on the top half of the transparent screen that the actor audience will be looking at, facing the real audience, so that both the actor audience and the real audience can see everything on the transparent display. At the same time, the scene can be played again - the murder, the sex in the cinema, whatever it is. It may culminate in a romantic embrace. A curtain falling can be embellished by credits rolling on the curtain itself via whatever projector.

The end.

PS: It is, theoretically, enough for me to imagine the countless gestures and rehearsals I observe daily in the theater of life when recurring roles play out the dailogues of the doctor, the lawyer, the housewife, the professional housewife, the novel role, the rebel, the plotter, the silent plotter, the possible terrorist, and all the ensuing confusion and suggestion it leaves me with. Not to mention the countless texts of interpretation running through my head outside the notion of a specified role - the unroled, unscheduled thoughts, etc. The theater of life as a simulation of my memory of life and my expectation of life, and my ability to live (my role to live).