Escaping yourself while embracing yourself - An ethnographic study of the regular visitors of the Performance Bar Rotterdam

This ethnographic study revolves around the motivation, meaning-making and social interactions of regular visitor of the Performance Bar Rotterdam. Findings revealed the visitor’s perception of the Performance Bar (PB) as unique and meaningful and seperated from their “usual reality”, wherefore regulars seem to be particularly attached to the PB as a place. The promise to have a different night out, full of surprises challenges and play seems to resonate with the visitors. For them, the PB stand for a specific kind of humor, entertainment, art practice and audience engagement, which they can not get at any other cultural or nightlife venue. Through the argumentation of differing values, visitors not only demarcate themselves from “other people”, but also from PB visitors that are not considered to be “PB people”. This indicates towards the idea of a specific core audience that associates themselves with specific values identified as “postmodern”. Regulars claim to be more than average open-minded, curious, open, respectful and “free” than other people. Through the choice for and identification with the PB some visitors argue to express their “unique” and “authentic” personality that they particularly identify with the PB community. To seemingly fluent switch from role to role as described by postmodern scholars the “protean self” and in the PB, the roles between the performers and visitors appear to be reversed and blurry as regular visitor struggle to distinguish one from the other during a PB evening. The hosts of the Performance Bar encourage every visitor to perform on stage and to be engaged in the evenings activities by designing a play like atmosphere through the methods of improvisational theatre. A so-called “magic circle” is drawn between the PB and the “usual reality”; a spatiotemporal materialized fantasy in the frame of performance art with unclear rules and loose structure, which is “organic but also planned.” Visitors are invited to engage in the preplanned and improvised concepts, games and artistic activities proposed by the PB team and the curated performers of the evening. Social order and normality is constantly questioned, negotiated and transformed through the reoccurring play with social norms, boundaries, and awkwardness. This seems to create a specific social bonding between the visitor that leads to a “careless and free” atmosphere and a strong sense of community. Results propose that frequent visits and engagement in the proposed play activities enables and triggers transformative learning trajectories as self-reflection and personal development.