"What is Acting?" by Michael Kirby

This article represents the definition of acting by Michael Kirby. He states that "not all performance is acting", as happenings show that performers often played themselves or nobody. They failed to represent anything relevant to their characters or story, remaining as themselves within a play. "Pretending" was a missing action amongst the performers, as time and place never changed from that of the spectator. Although they performed a variety of gestures relative to the performance, there was little evidence of them feigning or impersonating.



Spectators, along with their audiences alike, have the ability to recognise and identify acting and non-acting. In other words, viewer sees when one or multiple performers act and "not act." However, past performers and practitioners created a behaviour continuum where variations in acting and non-acting shrank. As a result, the ability to categorise increased in difficulty. Acting and non-acting appear on different sides of the continuum, as non-acting represents limited effort in feigning or impersonating a character and entity. Those characteristics reside on the left-hand side of this continuum, since acting and its personality remain on the far right. There is no concern for "the degree of reality", but considers "the amount of acting" instead.



Not all performances use acting in their material. A large number of dance pieces match this statement, such as those featured in Far-East theatre. Instead, some stage attendants divert relevant props into and from their desired locations, alongside costume changes and producing tea for the actors. Unlike the onstage performers, stage attendants never appear in the narrative informational structure. Stage attendants have attire that differs from the performers, but their presence within a performance remains onstage. Despite the stage attendants not acting on stage, they exist as part of the visual representation.

   

A true performer produces realistic feigning and simulation; but other qualities that determine acting, such as representation and simulation apply to the performer.

This is an image of Obi Wan Kenobi, portrayed by Alec Guinness. He uses realism in the feigning and simulation, two qualities that define a "true performer".

"When the performer, like the stage attendants of Kabuki and Noh, is merely himself and is not embedded, as it were, in matrices of pretended or represented character, situation, place and time, I refer to him as being "non-matrixed."" (Michael Kirby, 1972)

This quote suggests that, there is a firm line between what is acting and "not acting". It shows performing as a medium requiring  pretended or represented characters, alongside an understanding in situation, place and time. As a result, it indicates that the performer needs to have a good understanding of these features, in order to appear as a realistic character for audiences.