On April 4th, Kappa Alpha Theta put on event called Rock the Casa. During Rock The Casa, various campus acapella groups, dance groups and individual performers participated in this event to support CASA of Washtenaw County. These performers put on a “second personality” while performing. They are in what I believe is the equivalent to what athletes call “competition mode”. While on stage, these performers must put on an act: forget their friends who are watching in the audience, forget the whispers going on around them and zone into their performance. They become the actors, the center of attention. They must forget everything else going on in their lives for the brief time they are on stage and become immersed in this new character of a performer. It is remarkable how these performers are able to completely disengage themselves from the events of their separate, daily lives, as well as their surroundings to devote themselves to a collaborative, dramatic performance where they act as if they have no other worries.
Erwing Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, claims that “[w]hen an individual enters the presence of others, they commonly seek to acquire information about him…” (Goffman,1). Goffman goes on to talk about how knowing about the individual “actor” helps the audience develop expectations and hypothesize the actor’s expectations of them. In the case of Rock the Casa, the various performers had stop thinking about how the audience was solely focused on them. They were thinking about many different aspects of the actors’ lives and the actors had to ignore this and perform as if they are alone in their bedroom, in front of a mirror, with no audience. They must stop thinking about how audience members may be analyzing each and every action they make, and focus solely on performing. Further, Goffman talks about how there are two different aspects of actors’ activities: “the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off,” (Goffman, 2). The Rock the Casa performers, or “actors”, have expressions on their face while performing. They all appeared to be smiling and enthusiastic to be performing, yet focused and poised. I, as a member of the audience, perceived the expressions that they gave off in a certain way. I perceived their smiles and giddiness as their happiness and their focus and seriousness as their confidence. Whether of not these were their true emotions, this was the expressions that they gave, and how I, as a member of the audience, perceived them. The actors had to break away from their everyday lives to give these expressions. No matter what their true emotions were, they had to perform as this new happy and confident character to put on an engaging performance and appear in unison with their co-performers.
In Nina Bandelj’s article, How Method Actors Create Character Roles, she argues that “[t]he portrayals of characters in film and on stage, conveying distinct images of human identity, motivation and action, are among the most pervasive popular cultural objects” (Bandelj, 388). With this, during Rock the Casa, the performers portrayed an image of themselves and their performance that is distinct from all other aspects of their world. No matter what their true identity is, they put on a performance where they appear engaged, dedicated and confident. They are the center of attention for the time they are on stage—the center of the world for everyone in the room for those few minutes. They performed as entertainment, but also to benefit the CASA charity, making their motivation two fold, or at least appear to be. Whether or not this was their performance motivation, they were able to dedicate themselves to the performance, in coordination with the other performers, to appear to have this motivation and act as if the performance was their sole focus. The performers were in “competition mode”, acting with the other performers to create an engaging, dramatic performance.
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