Nothing like...falling...

This article for the journal Performance Research was commissioned by editor Richard Gough for inclusion in the 100th edition of Performance Research Volume 23:4 (June 2018). It responds to the issue "On Falling", published by Performance Research in 2013 (Volume 18 Issue 4). In "Nothing like falling" I include an account of falling downstairs as 'everyday action', and contrast it with performed falling, by an expert practitioner, which is 'nothing like falling'. The one signals a complete loss of control, the other a heightened control or mastery of human bodywork within the set-up or set-ups specific to expert performance-making. Some writers in Performance Studies have argued, on the basis of renewed interest in the work of Erving Goffman (published in the 1950s), that everything is performed (in the everyday as well as onstage), and there has been a tendency to equate performances of everyday life with those of perrformance makers. In this paper I argue for the radical separation of everyday and expert performances, where the latter are characterised by both invention and expert control.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Performance Research on 04/07/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13528165.2018.1511037