The Spear Carrier: 
Personal Histories of Performance

By Stephen Johnson

With Thanks to Maria Meindl for the gift of her fine editorial experience.  And to Sarah Robbins, Robert Motum, and everyone involved in the Gatherings Project for their encouragement and contribution to the creation of these words.  For WW. 

I hope to add three entries each week over Winter 2025. See below for all entries.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

The entries found on this page are my attempts, in writing, to trace my own 'first' experiences of performance.  There is a longer introduction, The Spear Carrier and the Gatherings Project, which you can link to below; but for anyone who wants to wade in without it, here are a few words to start.
I am in the midst of a project, for which I am asking others to remember their 'first' experiences of performance, whether as performers themselves, as students of performance, or as audience members.  The entries below are my attempt to do what I have asked others to do. 
The adjective 'first' might mean 'first that I remember' or 'first of that kind of performance.’
It will be clear from the scope of what I write here that my definition of performance covers a broad range of experience, as it does in the Gatherings Project, from the ballet and classical theatre to the puppet show and the movie theatre, and from performances at school, on stages and off, to performances at the side of the road, on the street, and in the playground.  There is nowhere that can hide from performance, or, at least, that isn't influenced by the performances we experience. 
For myself, I have always been unaccountably at the edges of other people's performances, sometimes stumbling into the circle. 
I found myself writing these entries eagerly, and with pleasure.  I hope that this exercise will encourage others to record what they remember, adding to the archive of our shared cultural experiences. This is historical evidence. This is an archive. Of course, it has become clear in the 'doing' that I had a strong need to to write.  So, of course, I did it for myself.    
I hope that by giving these personal microhistories I can reinforce just how pervasive, and how essential, performance is to our experience.

Week One: First Entries

Week Two: Temple On The Hill

Week Three: Outside Looking In

Coming This Winter:

Wild Audiences I have Known
Last Rites of the Saturday Matinee
The Spitballs in King Lear
Macbeth and the Scream
*
First Public Performances
My First Pratfall
Playing a Philistine in Kindergarten
Vaudeville in Grade Two
*
A Public Schooling
One Man Show on the Side of the Road
Roll Over, Beethoven in the Schoolyard
Battle of City and Country In the School Assembly
*
Stranger Stages
Bathrobes, Toilet Rolls and the Mock Graduation
Proscenium and Puppets
Samuel Beckett Writes about High School