Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so

Host: The theater was empty, except for the echoes.
Rows of velvet seats sat in perfect silence, facing a stage littered with props, brushes, and the faint smell of turpentine and dreams. The ghost light — that single, pale bulb left burning for safety — glowed on the boards, casting one fragile pool of light into an ocean of dark.

Jack stood in the center of the stage, his hands stuffed into his coat pockets, his eyes tracing the empty rows like he was searching for ghosts. Jeeny sat on the edge, her feet dangling, her hair pulled back loosely, a faint smudge of paint on her wrist.

Jack: “Laurie Anderson once said, ‘Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words.’”
(He glances around, half-smiling.)
Jack: “Joy. What a fragile word for something so rare.”

Jeeny: “It’s not fragile, Jack. It’s feral. That’s the point. You don’t capture joy — you chase it. You build something wild enough for it to live in, even if only for a moment.”

Host: A draft slipped through the cracked door, rustling the script pages on the floor. Somewhere backstage, a rope creaked, and the sound of a distant train bled faintly through the walls, like the heartbeat of a city still awake.

Jack: “You make it sound like joy’s a wild animal we’re supposed to feed with art.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it is. You ever notice how when you’re really creating, time breaks? The noise in your head stops. You’re just... alive. That’s the wild part Laurie meant — not the result, but the state.”

Jack: “That sounds a lot like madness to me.”

Jeeny: “Maybe madness and joy are cousins. Maybe art is the family reunion where they finally dance together.”

Host: The ghost light flickered, its filament trembling. Jack stepped closer to it, the warm glow reflecting in his eyes — grey meeting gold.

Jack: “Funny thing is, every artist I’ve known talks about suffering, not joy. The whole myth of the tortured soul. You bleed, you hurt, you break — and somehow that’s what makes it ‘authentic.’”

Jeeny: “That’s because suffering is easier to name. Joy is harder — it’s too big, too pure, too untranslatable. The tortured artist gets praise; the joyful one gets ignored. But the real art — the kind Laurie meant — it doesn’t come from pain. It comes from freedom.”

Jack: “Freedom? Or delusion?”

Jeeny: “Freedom. The moment you stop performing for approval, and start playing for the universe itself.”

Host: The stage lights above flickered once, briefly alive, then faded back into shadow. Jeeny stood, walking to center stage, barefoot, her footsteps soft against the dust.

Jeeny: “You remember the first time you ever felt alive, Jack? The first time you did something that made you forget yourself?”

Jack: (pausing) “...When I was twelve. I snuck into an old warehouse, found a broken piano. The sound was awful — all metal and air. But I just... kept playing. No one was there. No one cared. And for a second, it was like the whole universe was listening.”

Jeeny: “That’s it. That’s the wild joy Laurie was talking about. The moment before the world starts judging. Before the ego wakes up. That’s the truth — not what you can explain, but what you can feel.”

Jack: “So you think art’s about joy, not meaning?”

Jeeny: “Joy is meaning, Jack. It’s the purest kind. It’s when you touch existence without trying to define it. Like a bird flying without asking why.”

Host: The air was changing — the cold of the theater was giving way to a warmth that came not from light, but from presence. The silence wasn’t empty now — it was listening.

Jack: “But the world doesn’t reward joy. It rewards tragedy. People don’t go to museums for lightness, they go to feel their own grief reflected back.”

Jeeny: “Because they’ve forgotten how to celebrate. But Laurie was right — the artist’s rebellion is joy. It’s the most dangerous emotion you can show in a broken world, because it says, I refuse to be crushed.”

Jack: “So you’re saying joy is an act of defiance.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Laughter in the face of entropy. Movement in the face of fear. Creation in the face of chaos. That’s performance art — not to escape reality, but to reclaim it.”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the old doors, sending a few papers skittering across the stage. Jack picked one up — a page from a script, blank except for a single sentence scribbled in charcoal:

"The stage is only alive when the soul stops pretending."

Jack read it quietly, then looked up at Jeeny.

Jack: “You wrote this?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or maybe it just... appeared. Things like that happen in places that remember joy.”

Jack: “You really believe the universe listens?”

Jeeny: “I believe the universe sings back. But only when we stop trying to compose it.”

Host: She walked to the edge of the stage, spread her arms, and closed her eyes — like a child or a believer. The light from the ghost bulb glowed around her, casting her shadow high** on the curtain** behind her — a silhouette of both grace and defiance.

Jeeny: “You see, Jack — performance art isn’t about understanding. It’s about surrender. About being so alive, you stop needing to explain what that means.”

Jack: (softly) “And the rest of us?”

Jeeny: “We just have to remember how to dance without asking for an audience.”

Host: The camera would have pulled back, the light now blooming, spilling beyond the stage, until even the darkness seemed to hum.

Jack watched her — half-smiling, half-lost — as though seeing beauty for the first time without the need to own it.

And in that moment, there were no words, no meanings, no roles —
only the wild joy of being alive in the unrepeatable now.

A performance for no one.
And therefore, at last, true.