An endless, philosophical discussion of course. But rather intriguing. 🙂

Here different perspectives and questions on reality from practitioners of improvisation: (please add!)

• Everything is reality!
• If everything is reality (also performance), how do we make agreements about performance (and about the boundaries of performance?) – How do we clarify the situation for ourselves and for our audience to feel ‘safe’ – or if not safe, to at least make ourselves and others feel appreciated and recognised in our respective roles?
• If reality is everywhere all the time, how come we have the sensation of feeling more or less real at different times inside the improvisation? Are certain states connecting or distancing us from “reality”?
• Reality is something we can access more or less at different times – and the structure of performance can create a space where we can connect to reality
• OR is reality a space where we can connect to performance?
• Is the only reality the physical reality?
• Is the only reality that which I perceive beyond language? And would that mean, that when I use language I am not real?

Quotes from WhatIIIF2019:

Performance as Another Form of Reality

Performance is in itself a reality and its basic ingredients are heightened awareness and attentiveness on what is going on in the external and internal environment of the performers.

Performance is a senses and imagination based reality that exists in real time. I would like to call it reality beyond the reality that is nevertheless rooted in reality. I could  also call it Meta-reality or Timeless reality or Communal reality or reality in Expectancy or even Elemental reality.

How many realities do we inhabit when we are performing?

The reality of who we are or think we are, the reality of our beliefs, aesthetics, preferences, aspirations, of our background, the social and political context we live in plays a significant role in the construction of the reality within the improvisation performance. To what extent are we as improvisers willing to get detached from the realities we carry? And why should we do so? To what extent do our realities nurture or overload the reality within the improvisation performance?

Performance room – Protected Space

If the performance space is maintained by presence, is then reality not present? Is that what we experience in everyday life – in contrast to every kind of performance – a completely filled room that we can only control by planning? What holds the performance room together? What will break him? Where does he split? In what does he wake up and what does he notice? What then seeps into the performance? What comes back then?
Is not performance the protected space, the children’s playroom, which we’ll have to clean up later? And is not the so-called reality the machine that drives us out of the playroom again and again, and is performance not being in a protected space? And is this not the task of art ?