Word: Threshold

The first page of News, Sex, and Performance Theory introduces "threshold" as "the space that both separates and joins spaces." This paradoxisism (-word?) reoccurs throughout the text with both in the theoretical conversation and through the examples used to demonstrate it. A performance becomes "a person see[ing] the even; [seeing] himself; [seeing] himself seeing the even" and seeing himself seeing others seeing the event. The "layering of seeings" in itself forms thresholds between each form of seeing. The theater on NY's 23rd Street, Squat, utilizes the concept of a threshold in full force when the backdrop for their stage is a glass wall looking out over the street. This threshold divides but also has a door, letting the two settings merge, blurring the lines between the stage and real world. The confusion of categories within this theater was caused by the blurring, facilitated by the threshold.