Normal? What's normal?

A large part of what makes performance great is surprise. What is surprising is interesting - makes us laugh, shocks us - can make us reassess our preconceptions. I enjoy the absurd, because the absurd does or puts together things that are by nature out of place, which is therefore surprising for us.

You see someone performing an action, and you have an expectation of how it will play out and an unconscious assumption about how far they will take it. The performer then breaks this.

This is another thing I value about performance - to explode the boundaries of what is acceptable - and in my experience it is most profound in the live event. So when you see something happen that breaks your expectations, blows your assumptions out of the water, not only is it funny etc., but it makes you reconsider your own ideas around the limits of what is possible.

So I find the absurd inspiring and motivating, and I relish the affect it has on my brain - rewiring it away from fixed ideas, and towards a constantly shifting state.

-JB

What Have you Done To Me? from Nisha Madhan on Vimeo.