Notes on Effective Performance – according to Derek
Bowskill, Clive Barker and Yoshi Oida.

THEA 110 Introduction to Live Performance and Production
Word Count: 985

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What is performance, in what ways can the actor or actors make a theatrical performance effective? A performance can be said to be the representation of actions executed for an audience to communicate ideas, in which the actors bear a share of the responsibility of ensuring that the performance is effective, or convincing to the audience. This essay will examine three authors varying view points on what this entails and what is required of an actor to achieve this performance and to what extent they agree or disagree with each other, if at all.
Derek
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To produce an effective performance, Yoshi Oida maintains that to hold the audience's attention there needs to be a range of dynamics in the performance such as there is evident in real life, and it is by doing this that the performance will ring true to the audience. Both Clive Barker and Yoshi Oida agree that the actor needs to make use of the patterns and skills that are used in daily life, although they should be heightened by training and the attention given to the character's responses to the present situation. The way in which the actor accomplishes this reflects upon the way the audience perceives the character being portrayed.
Derek Bowskill also draws comparisons between everyday life and acting, comparing the donning of various faces or masks by an individual in different situations to the role playing of an actor in a performance. Perhaps he puts it best when he refers to the difference being the use of imagination by the actor. He is not alone in this belief, as both Oida and Barker also stress the need for the actor to use his imagination in the portrayal of a character, Oida urging the actor to use imagination to pay attention to the details of a character's