Josephine Condemi
Dear reader,
How do you answer “how are you”? Is it “good” or “bad,” followed by a list of actions you’ve done or endured to explain it better?
Sometimes, we end up drawing a balance sheet, with a line underneath marked “plus,” “minus,” or “equal.” Every action serves a purpose—even if it’s just breathing to survive: succeed, “plus”; fail, “minus”.
This is the other side of project culture. If (almost) anything is possible as long as it can be quantified, we just need to follow the plan to achieve it and monitor results in real time. Performativity—understood as optimising the input-output relationship—was identified as a characteristic of The Postmodern Condition, now 45 years ago.
But who writes this programme? Who set these goals—society, you, or both? Treccani explains that, in technology, performance is “the function of a machine”; in advertising, it’s “the assertion of a product”; in sports, it’s “the outcome of a competition.” Sometimes, we end up feeling a bit like a machine, a bit like a product, always competing, even if just to survive.
Beneath the surface, and sometimes not so subtly, there’s a performance-driven, almost combative logic: come, see, perform, show, win. In this mindset, even artistic expression becomes something we “do” to “obtain” (approval or attention from others).
Yet. Performance derives from art. It originates from the act of staging oneself to express something meaningful—a tradition stretching back over 2,500 years, to the masks and rhythms of Dionysian rites that birthed Western theatre.
As society grew more complex, it pushed us to explore the differences between public and private selves. In the early 1900s, writers like Pirandello, anthropologists like Turner, sociologists like Goffman, and philosophers like Butler all examined, in different ways, the tension between what is expected of us and what we wish to be or do.
While the human sciences and literature turned to theatre to describe life, theatre entered daily life through happenings—unrepeatable, fleeting events of the 1960s in which audiences were invited to participate, act, and “perform” without a script, fully engaged in body and mind.
With this open spirit, here at Mangrovia, we’ve dedicated this month to performance—“stepping off the table” to find stories and spaces where we can simply breathe together, for the sheer joy of it.
Through all this, we’ve come to realise: as human beings, we only truly exist by interacting, expressing, and manifesting ourselves where we feel recognised and welcomed. So, we hope to continually expand this space, outwardly and inwardly, with an open heart and mind ready for the unexpected. Because not everything that counts can be counted.
Thank you for being there. Enjoy the journey!
