Performativity!

When I started to think about what example of a performative act/utterance that is intentionally performed to mean something else, I thought of sarcasm. I particularly thought of using sarcasm when you're unhappy with your friends, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.
    Kevin Hart gives an example of a jealous girlfriend hearing her boyfriend having fun without her while on a boys night out, and instead of asking why they're not out together having fun, she essentially says "have fun!" without really meaning it. "Do you boo boo" is her way of communicating to her partner that she's unhappy and fed up with him. This situation obviously makes for a funny stand up bit, especially when Kevin Hart exaggerates the girlfriend's reaction, but it also is a reminder that often times the words we say are not always the words that we mean.

This summer I taught beginning acting classes to kids that attended the summer camp(s) that I was an instructor at. An early concept I taught them was the idea that words have the potential to mean more than their face value depending on the context. This was a particularly useful concept when we started to work on open scenes, or scenes that contain dialogue open to interpretation, with lines that are intentionally ambiguous so that no particular plot or intention is suggested. In an effort to encourage to kids to make up their own scene with the words I provided to them and not have the same story happen with each group of scene partners, I encouraged the kids to "raise the stakes" of the scene to make it something more pressing and important for their characters, and in turn the performances were much more interesting to watch.

For example:

A: Hi!

B: Hello.
A: How’s everything?
B: Fine, I guess.
A: Do you know what time it is?
B: No. Not exactly.
A: Don’t you have a watch?
B: Not on me.
A: Well!
B: Well what?
A: What did you do last night?
B: What do you mean?
A: What did you do last night?
B: Nothing!
A: Nothing?
B: I said nothing.
A: Sorry I asked
B: That’s alright.

I really enjoyed this particular open scene because the kids impressed me with how different each of their interpretations of the text were.

One scene showed two strangers at a bus stop, one asking what time it was, then continuing to ask personal questions to this person they had just met. This was a pretty common interpretation of the scene. 

 Another scene included two friends talking the day after a big party and one of the friends being upset that his more popular friend was invited to the festivities without him. 

Finally, one of the most successful scenes (read: higher stakes!) displayed a married couple. The wife had been waiting all night for her husband to come home and when he finally arrives the next morning, she interrogates him about his suspicious activities, infidelity implied, while the husband denies any accusations.

As soon as I got the message through to the kids about making their own choices on what the scene meant and making those situations more pressing and important to their characters, the scenes began to greatly diversify. 

Just as "What did you do last night?" can mean something different depending on context, so can "Do  You Boo Boo!".