Setting the scene: valuing television as a medium for performance

Description

This paper explores some of the ways in which a critical emphasis on television performance can usefully inform an understanding of the medium’s aesthetic nature and its cultural significance. Our use of the term ‘performance’ supports at least two connected meanings. Firstly, there is performance as the synonym of acting, which carries with it notions of a professionalism, training and an industry context. Secondly, there is an understanding of performance as the carrying out of a task or duty, which lends a functional, inconspicuous quality to the term. As a medium that fluctuates continually between the choreographed and the spontaneous, often combining both, television exhibits its commitment to a wide spectrum of performances ranging from the ‘ordinary’ to the ‘exceptional.’ Our discussions will centre upon examples taken from across this range as means of demonstrating television’s propensity for providing time and space for the extended appreciation of performance in its many forms, tones and styles. We will draw attention to the ways in which television, through a series of compositional strategies, can both efface the significance of the work of its performers and become self-aware about the performances it seeks to depict. By placing a weight of emphasis on aesthetic form, the paper will argue for a more detailed understanding of the relationships between performances in programmes such as Storage Wars (A&E, 2010-) and True Detective (HBO, 2014-), not as a means of providing a hierarchy of acting achievement or identifying a unified or uniform definition of television performance, but instead to emphasise the especially intimate and responsive synthesis between performer and medium.

Period	Apr 2016
Event title	Acting on TV
Event type	Conference
Location	Reading, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National