TOO REAL?!?!??!!?

A definition for acting is: "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances." Of course there are caveats. If an actor is truly invested in his/her circumstances will they really kill their spouse for cheating on them? The answer is, hopefully, no! However, there are times when a performance can be too real. My definition of a too real performance would be one where the illusion of reality (reality created on stage) is too close to real life.

I've heard many times when people describe someone's acting to be too real. During Meisner training, one of my classmates used sense memory to recreate an emotional scene and it felt a bit too voyeuristic. Had she used her imagination it would have been more engaging to watch. In the scene she was grieving her baby's death. She said (after the scene was stopped) that her emotional prep came from something that she went through when she was younger. We never found out what that "something" was, but it was so real that it was no longer enjoyable to watch. Part of a good performance is also knowing that it is a performance. What we saw that day was a woman in genuine pain. Her actual emotional trauma couldn't help her in this scene. We as the audience felt pity, but a lot of us also felt like this was something we weren't supposed to see. And the teacher had to stop it for the sake of the student. In other words, she was experiencing real pain based on a real situation from her own real life instead of one based on her given imaginary circumstances.

Another example I can think of comes from Britain's Got Talent. In 2009, a man did a stunt involving a knife where it appeared as if he stabbed himself. Yes, there is a bit of shock value there and people quickly realized that it was still a performance, but when is it too real? Here, he had the benefit of staging. His head is in front of the knife giving it the impression that he stabbed himself in the neck or eye. But since he was still moving and still balancing on his hands no one was too scared other than the initial jump. Skip to 2:00 in the video.

The question is ask is about performance art. What if the point of the theatrical performance is to be too real. We all hear about wacky performance art where the artist does something insane. To me it's clear that particular artist is making some statement, but is it necessary? For some reason I'm reminded of the Tibetan monks who set themselves on fire to protest "cultural genocide" at the hands of the Chinese (I'm well aware that this is by no means performance art, but a protest). The question here is when are these lines blurred? There have been several artists who mutilated themselves for a performance. When is it too much?

I'll just reiterate what I said earlier. In my opinion, a good performance doesn't need to be "real." It still needs to be a performance. Otherwise, it's just reality.