Abstract

In modern and western societies there is a marked, seemingly irrational manner of dealing with one's own incompetencies, particularly in areas of performance from which the actor cannot escape. In this work we depict humans whose incompetencies pull them away from acting, and we describe how their focus shifts from action per se to the performer per se. This shift is characterizable in terms of its psychological, cultural, and historical accompaniments. The measurable outcome of the shift is the departure from the level of detailed action, and an increment in use of person-category vocabularies.