Great Reckonings in Little Rooms by Bert O. States

Modes of Performance:

1) Self- Expressive: In the self-expressive mode the actor seems to be performing on his own behalf. He says, in effect, “See what I can do.” Whatever they are about is less than what is on display (opera, dance, mime). Found in certain rolls (many leads in Shakespeare), certain actors (Sarah Bernhardt), etc. The actor finds a fissure in the text that allows him to make his unique contribution.
2) Collaborative: to break down the distance between the actor and the audience and to give the spectator something more than a passive role in the theater exchange. “Why should we pretend that all this is an illusion. We are in this together.”
3) Representational: the drama of the subject. The actors energies now are bent on becoming the character, and, for the audience, they cease to be artistic energies and become the facts of his character’s nature. The play is not a text, classic or brand-new, out of which theater magic can be made; it is now an enactment of significant human experience. The virtuosity now lies in the power of the subject.

p. 182: "I should emphasize that my treatment of these three modes as if they occurred purely is strictly a convenience of definition. It is precisely our ability to integrate them or to arrest on or another of them in our perceptual attention that lends the unique depth and texture to the theater experience."