presentation

Schechner discusses how people view theater in a certain light, which excuses the scenes in the drama. When the images are represented in the frame work of play, then all the images presented thereafter will be taken as play. “It is a matter not simply of consequences but of context.” (298)
The participants of the International Symposium of Ritual and Theatre are invited to view Squat’s performance Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free. Though these participants had experienced many different kinds of performance, they were extremely uncomfortable with the performance.
We see “art” in “life’ because even life is presented to us in a “cooked” or set up way. We cannot separate the two completely because information is given to us and portrayed in a way that involved splicing, editing and careful thought on how best to present the material.
Schechner describes art in life with the news. He goes on to describe the regulars involved in the news program: the anchors, the ordinary people caught up in this or that event as witnesses and the ordinary people actually involved in the tragedy.
-“players, spectators, and spectator-participants are playing and they are not playing” (300)
The players are the anchors, the spectators the audience and the spectator-participants are the ordinary people who are witnesses or directly involved.
The set up of the news programs starts with the bad news but ends with a happier note (313). The set up/order sends two messages, theater and real life. The “quick cuts, edited to the second, mixing news and commercials” makes real life become a performance/ritual that is continued by the order of how the news is presented. The story about the fire with the children and the mother. The story ends on a note that the TV will continue the investigation into the allegations against the landlord. The material is presented as a story of sorts (314).
“Performances that exist “between” “art” and “life” make all those quotation marks necessary, for these performances throw into question the very categories they represent. TV news says clearly that it is “life,” but it isn’t.” (324)