Literature vs. Performance

Literature is a tangible piece of language. It is often connected to ideas of universal interests or ideas. It is a written piece of work that contains creativity and emotion. Literature can be poetry, a novel, biographies essays, speeches and plays. I could go on with the long list of all the things that literature can be but that would make this blog pretty boring. My point is that literature can be so much, similar to the word play literature has no fixed limits. It is open to interpretation. Is a newspaper article literature? I think it is.

A performance is a form of entertainment, that it is put on to entertain an audience. This can be in a movie or on stage. It can be; singing dancing, acting, art or even playing jokes. Like for literature, the list on what performance is, is endless and up to interpretation.

Literature tends to be static. One can read the same book several times and it will still be the same book. A performance will never be the same. The audience’s response alone can change the way actors perform. Different actors and directors might perform and direct a play differently. A performance is more flexible than a piece of literature.

Both literature and performance spark to the reader's imagination. Literature allows the reader more freely to imagine the setting or characters based on descriptions from the text. This makes reading literature times harder because one has to use their own imagination, on the other hand it also is built what the reader thinks. That way literature connects better with the reader on a personal basis than a play might. A performance is put on based on the performer's imagination. It is might therefore not be how an audience member would have interpret it, however it allows the audience to simply lean back and enjoy the show. With this I am not trying to say that the audience doesn’t have to use their head during a performance but the imagination is not asked as much as when reading.

A novel is a piece of literature. It is fictional narrative with a descriptive setting, action and detailed character. A Novel tends to be longer than a play and is built with chapters and paragraphs. A play, as in the written play is made up of stage directions and dialogue. Is is shorter than a novel, as all the action and the visual effects that are described in the novel are brought to life later on stage when the written play is performed.

A novel and a play both have a similar setup. It starts with the setting of the “normal World”. Then comes a catalyzed for change that will cause action. This can be a characters emotions and thought, or another event. The climax of the novel or play is its highest and most exciting part. After that it falls back to the “new normal”. In a novel or play is often a journey that causes a transformation.

Sources:

“literature”dictionary.com,9 september 2015 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literature
"performance"dictonary.com,9th,September,2015http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/performance