Beginning in April 2021, Stephen Johnson, Principal Investigator of the Gatherings Project, engaged interested members of the Project in a conversation about their first experiences with performance. The results of those conversations are presented here. 

In advance of each conversation, Stephen provided participants with an explanation and a set of questions to consider, reproduced below. Please read these over before you watch or listen to these interviews, for a better sense of our preparation. 

Here is the Invitation: 

"This is a time when we cannot easily attend live performance. Although 'old habits die hard,' new habits can also take hold. Whether we are practitioners or audience members, we long to be near performance, practising or witnessing. But we can grow away from this habit over time--certainly as spectators and auditors, we may in fact have some difficulty re-aclimatizing ourselves to being in a crowded public space 'attending to' performance. We will need to grow back into it when the pandemic ends, as we had to grow into our isolation as it began. 

This is a moment, perhaps, to remember what it was that made us passionate about performance in the first place. With that idea in mind, I would like to talk with you about your first and early experiences with live performance--the experiences that made you want to return for more, or to perform yourself." 

The link below will take you to the prompts used for these conversations. It would be good to take a look at them before visiting the conversations, if you have time.

SPEAR CARRIER: Also below, you will find a link to Stephen’s own version of his first memories of performance.