Compare And Contrast: Live Performance Art Vs. Theatre

Live performance art and theatre are two different forms of art work. Live performance is a unique and temporary form of work. This means that you don't usually repeat what you do for another audience. However, in theatre, you act out a "show" for an audience to see, which can be repeated as many times as you want. In live performance, everything that happens is real. An example Marina Abramovic gave in one of her videos was "In theatre you can cut with a knife and there's blood. The knife is not real and the blood is not real. In performance, the blood and the knife and the body of the performer is real." This shows that in performance art, you are yourself and anything can happen to you. But in "theatre you play somebody else" and you use props to make the act more lively and realistic.

Marina Abramovic is one of the most successful performance artists. She performed a touching piece titled: "The Artist is Present," where she saw her ex boyfriend, Ulay, for the first time in thirty years after their breakup in China. Her live performance consisted of spending one minute of silence with a stranger in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the video, one witnesses her expression as she first opens her eyes to realize Ulay is seated before her.

This performance by Marina Abramovic was temporary like most performance arts. The performance was experienced only once. The whole performance was a surprise to Abramovic because she didn’t know who to expect or what was going to happen. Unlike theatre, roles aren’t given out in performance arts. If this was theatre, then Abramovic would have known everyone that sat in front of her before it all happened and it wouldn’t have been random. If she would have known that her ex boyfriend, Ulay was going to be one of the people who sat in front of her, then her emotion shown through the video wouldn’t have been so real and