For most of my adult life, I have stood on stages.
Some large. Some half-empty. Some humid and electric. Some indifferent.
And for a long time, I thought the primary question was simple:
How do I perform well?
It took me years to realise that this wasn’t the real question.
The real question was quieter and more confronting:
Am I performing — or am I being performative?
They look similar from the outside.
They feel radically different from within.
They feel radically different from within.
The Stage as Mirror
The stage can be an unforgiving place.
There are no abstractions there. No ideological debates. No intellectual hiding spots.
Just breath, body, sound, timing, and the audience’s nervous systems responding in real time.
Contrary to popular belief, performance at its highest level is not about exaggeration a spectacle or about projecting a larger-than-life persona.
In fact, the best performances often feel like a stripping away.
Psychologist Donald Winnicott wrote about the difference between the true self and the false self. The false self develops as a protective adaptation — a way to meet perceived expectations in order to secure attachment and approval. The true self emerges when a person feels safe enough to exist without defensive shaping.
On stage, the distinction becomes visible.
When I am performing, ( in the truest sense), something simplifies.
Attention narrows. There is less self-monitoring. The music leads.
When I am being performative, something tightens.
I begin scanning the room for cues. I anticipate applause.
I exaggerate what worked last time.
I subtly shape myself around what I think the audience wants.
The second mode is exhausting.
And more importantly, it breaks the circuit of connection.
The Psychology of the “Show”
Erving Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, described social interaction as theatrical performance.
We all manage impressions. We all present curated versions of ourselves depending on context.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
The problem begins when the presentation becomes dissociated from lived experience .
When the persona becomes a strategy for validation rather than a vessel for expression.
Self-Determination Theory, developed by Deci and Ryan, distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation arises from interest, enjoyment, and internal alignment.
Extrinsic motivation is driven by reward, approval, status.
Performing, in its healthy form, is intrinsically organised.
Being performative is extrinsically organised.
Being performative is extrinsically organised.
One expands the nervous system.
The other contracts it.
The other contracts it.
Over time, chronic extrinsic orientation correlates with lower well-being and higher anxiety.
Research consistently shows that when identity becomes tethered to external validation, emotional volatility increases (Kasser, 2002).
Artists are particularly susceptible.
The stage is a literal amplifier of feedback.
Applause can become addictive. Silence can feel annihilating.
And so the temptation arises: adjust the self to secure the response.
But something subtle gets lost when that happens.
Authenticity Without the Buzzword
“Authenticity” has become overused. It often collapses into branding language.
On stage, authenticity is less romantic.
It means staying with the note even when it trembles.
It means not over-ornamenting a phrase to secure approval.
It means allowing stillness when theatrics would be safer.
It means not over-ornamenting a phrase to secure approval.
It means allowing stillness when theatrics would be safer.
Performance at its best is disciplined vulnerability.
The research on flow states (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) helps here.
Flow occurs when skill meets challenge in full absorption.
During flow, self-referential thinking decreases. There is less rumination, less impression management.
In other words, when we are fully performing, we are thinking less about ourselves.
Being performative is self-conscious.
Performing is self-transcendent.
Performing is self-transcendent.
That distinction is not spiritual poetry. It is neurocognitive.
Functional MRI studies on self-referential processing show that excessive activation of the default mode network is associated with rumination and anxiety.
States of immersion quiet this circuitry. The musician, athlete, or surgeon in full engagement is not obsessing over how they are perceived.
They are inside the act itself.
When the Audience Becomes the Judge
This is when the most dangerous shift can happen.
It is when the audience ceases to be a partner in exchange and becomes a tribunal.
At that point, performance mutates into impression management.
The performer becomes hyper-aware of their image. The music becomes secondary.
It's where narcissism can quietly creep in. Not in the grandiose, obvious sense, but in the anxious, approval-seeking one.
Vulnerable narcissism is marked by hypersensitivity to evaluation and an unstable self-concept (Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010).
The stage can either expose that instability or heal it.
When the focus is on transmitting something larger than the self, (call it music, truth, beauty, the divine), the ego softens.
The performer becomes a conduit.
When the focus is on securing admiration, the ego hardens.
The performer becomes the 'product'.
And the audience can feel the difference.
Beyond the Stage
The uncomfortable realisation for me was that this distinction did not remain confined to concert halls.
It translated to relationships.
To conversations.
Social media.
Intimacy....
To conversations.
Social media.
Intimacy....
Am I speaking because something needs to be said?
Or because I want to be seen saying it?
Or because I want to be seen saying it?
Am I posting because the work matters?
Or because the algorithm rewards visibility?
Or because the algorithm rewards visibility?
Am I showing up in love as a person?
Or as a version of myself curated to remain desirable?
Goffman was right: life has theatrical dimensions.
But there is a difference between participating in social choreography and outsourcing one’s identity to audience response.
When life becomes a constant performance for invisible spectators, exhaustion sets in.
Burnout research, particularly Christina Maslach’s work, identifies depersonalisation as a core component: a distancing from self and others under chronic strain.
Living performatively accelerates that split.
You become the role.
And you lose contact with the music.
The 'Music' as Axis
For musicians, “the music” is literal.
For others, it may be something else: craft, service, research, parenting, leadership.
Whatever that axis is, it functions as orientation.
When it leads, the self reorganises around purpose.
When image leads, purpose fragments.
When image leads, purpose fragments.
In contemplative traditions, there is language about becoming a vessel.
Not in a mystical sense, but in a functional one.
When egoic preoccupation quiets, action aligns more cleanly with intention.
This does not 'remove' ego. It integrates it.
Performance then becomes relational rather than self-protective.
The audience is not there to validate.
They are there to witness and to be moved.
They are there to witness and to be moved.
That difference changes everything.
A Personal Reckoning
There were years when I feared 'disappointing' audiences.
I mistook intensity for honesty.
I equated volume with conviction.
I believed I had to offer a heightened version of myself to justify the ticket price.
What I slowly learned is this:
The audience does not need theatrics.
They need coherence.
They need coherence.
Coherence between voice and body.
Between message and presence.
Between craft and character.
Between message and presence.
Between craft and character.
When those align, something larger moves through the space.
And paradoxically, that is when applause feels clean.
Not as proof of worth, but as shared recognition.
Questions Worth Holding
This topic not a binary one.
All of us slide along the spectrum.
All of us occasionally posture.
All of us care how we are perceived.
The question is one of orientation.
- Where is the centre of gravity?
- Is the act organised around approval or around truth?
- Is the nervous system scanning for validation, or engaged in transmission?
- If applause disappeared tomorrow, would the work remain?
These can be uncomfortable questions.
They strip away illusion.
The stage is merciless in this regard.
It reveals quickly when we are hiding behind performance rather than inhabiting it.
But perhaps that is its gift.
Because when performance ceases to be performative, it becomes something else entirely.
Not a spectacle.
Not a 'strategy'.
Not a 'strategy'.
A meeting.
If the distinction between performing and being performative feels subtle, it is because it is.
It lives in the nervous system before it lives in language.
And the stage- literal or metaphorical, will always tell the truth.
References
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation. American Psychologist.
- Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
- Kasser, T. (2002). The High Price of Materialism.
- Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Burnout.
- Pincus, A. L., & Lukowitsky, M. R. (2010). Pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.
- Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment.
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