The Encyclopedia of Interactive Performance

Status is a useful tool when creating characters and relationships. At its core, status reflects power. It helps negotiate who is dominant (high status) and who is submissive (low status) without needing to fight each other to figure things out.

Status comes in two flavors: positional and physical. The power of positional status is based on where you rank in a social hierarchy, while the power of physical status is reflected in how your body occupies space.

Positional status

Positional status reflects a person’s power within a social hierarchy. In the United States, there’s an idealized notion that there’s no “class structure.” Reality paints a different picture. Look at the following list, and see if you can tell which are the high and low positions.

• Principal – Janitor
• Teacher – Student
• Parent – Child
• Boss – Secretary

It’s easy to identify which positions are high and which are low, regardless of whether you believe that social hierarchies should exist.

Positional status is a relative power. It depends on who else is present. If a teacher is with a student, the teacher has high status, but with a principal, the teacher has low status. The position remains the same, but the status depends on the positions of the others present. Here are some ways to play positional status.

Chain of command – Positional status often reflects who leads and who follows. Those in high positions give orders, permission, accolades, and reprimands to people below. Those in low positions follow instructions, ask for permission, and seek approval. Played in concert, the high and low positions create a social hierarchy.

Focus – You can endow others with high position (and yourself with low) by using focus. Picture a movie star who walks into a restaurant. The diners may continue to eat and converse, but everyone’s attention is on the celebrity. To endow others with high positional status, treat everything they say and do as fascinating.

Freedom – Positional status is embodied through liberty. Characters in higher positions operate with impunity. Those in lower positions require permission. The bully does whatever he likes while the nerd does what is permitted.

Deference – Another way to establish positional status is through deference. Lower positions accommodate those in higher positions. If the queen enjoys classical music, so does everyone else.

Positional status is a paradox. Although high positions have power, that power must be given by those in lower positions. If no one bows before the queen, she’s not a powerful queen. To create a convincing illusion of social hierarchy, the pecking order must be honored.

Sometimes characters hold parallel positions. They might be students, co-workers, or husband and wife. Even when there’s apparent equality, relationships are more dynamic when one has more power than the other. If you’re not sure who holds the higher position, ask yourself who will have the final say. That’s the higher position.

Position may be important, but it’s not the whole story. Bosses aren’t always in charge any more than secretaries are always minions. Plenty of secretaries run the office and plenty of bosses don’t do anything. The fact is, position doesn’t always reflect personal power.

Physical status

Physical status reflects personal power, regardless of one’s position within the social hierarchy. It’s all about body language and speech patterns. It’s not what you do or say, but how you do or say it. The list below compares a few high and low physical status behaviors.

• Strong eye contact – Diverted eyes
• Body fills up space – Body occupies little space
• Clear, articulate speech – Hesitant, fragmented speech

Again, it’s easy to see which behaviors are high and which are low. Our bodies are constantly giving off physical status cues. Here’s an overview of the major areas.

Occupying space – How your body fills space says volumes about your physical status. Expansive bodies communicate high status, and constrained bodies communicate low. High status characters have large personal space bubbles that encompass everything and everyone around them. Low status have small personal space bubbles that are contained and protected. This can be seen when two strangers share an armrest on an airplane. Low makes room and high fills it up.

Physical contact – Familiarity plays a significant role when using physical contact to establish status. With people we trust, high status encompasses (an arm around the shoulder) and low status takes refuge (a head nestled against the shoulder). With strangers, high status makes easy physical contact, while low status is more restrained.

Hands and heads – Whenever you touch someone else’s head, you lower that person’s status while raising your own. If you touch their face, ruffle their hair, or hold their chin, it lowers their status and raises yours. The same applies to you. When your hand goes to your face, to nibble on a fingernail, cover your mouth when you laugh, or brush your hair behind your ear, you lower your own status and raise that of the person you’re with.

Eye contact – Eye contact reveals a lot about status. Being comfortable with eye contact is a high status trait, while low status is more tentative. It isn’t whether eye contact is made; it’s about how it’s held. High status easily holds eye contact as long as needed, while low status holds it intermittently or not at all.

Focused vs. unfocused energy – When a high status character moves, it’s for a purpose. Hands move to emphasize a point. The head moves to look a specific place. When there’s not a reason to move, high status is still. In contrast, low status energy is scattered. Fingers and legs wiggle, eyes blink repeatedly, the head tilts and bobs.

The most obvious way to play with physical status is to have it match your character’s position. Play high positions with high physicalities, and low with low. Obvious is good because it’s easy for spects to understand. You can also mix things up. You can play a king with low physical status or a slave with high physical status. A word of caution, though. It’s best to begin by mastering status in its most basic forms before you play with variations.

Misconceptions about status

When players first become aware of physical status, it can be an eye-opening experience. They sometimes judge themselves based on their personal status. It’s easy to assume that high status is better than low status. Not true. Think of status as a way to get things done. Yes, high status can be commanding, but low status can be cute. Picture a kid who convinces his mom to get him a candy bar by tilting his head, blinking his eyes, and wiggling back and forth. The kid has low positional and low physical status, yet can use both to get that candy bar.

Another misconception is that high status has to be overbearing and low status has to be weak. When playing high status, some players become bossy, rude, and unpleasant, while others playing low status become passive, nervous, and meek. These are legitimate choices, but they’re not the only options. High status can also be supportive and generous, just as low status can be persistent and confident. Status doesn’t dictate what to be, it affects how to be it.

Uses for status

When you need to establish an instant character, status is a great way to do it. Embody a physical status and identify your position, and you’re halfway there. Express a point of view and know your name, and you’ve got yourself an instant character.

Status can also be used to craft sympathetic and unsympathetic characters. Low status easily becomes sympathetic, just as high status easily becomes unsympathetic. Yes, it plays to stereotypes, but it works.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of status is how it defines your relationships with other characters. Embody a physical status, establish the positions, and you have a relationship. Being at different ends of the power spectrum is interesting. So is being a little bit higher or lower.

If you notice that you tend to endow spects with lower positions, that’s fine, but don’t get stuck there. Endowing spects with higher positions helps get them activated and justifies their taking charge.

Status shifts

So far, we’ve looked at status as though it were a static state. It’s not. It can also change. When someone in a higher position enters the scene, your relative position becomes lower. Often, so does your physical status. It’s fun to see the top dog become the second banana.

Mrs. Kunz runs her third-grade class with a strong, no-nonsense attitude. When Principal Perkins enters the room, she becomes meek and subservient.

Status can also shift when circumstances change, even when the relative positions remain the same.

Mr. and Mrs. Chavers have a relationship where his status is higher than hers. Even when she accuses him of seeing another woman, their statuses don’t change. But when she produces a pair of lace panties that are clearly not her own, Mr. Chavers suddenly embodies low physical status while his wife assumes high.

Yet another kind of status shift reveals that a character of apparently low position is actually high, or vice versa.

Waiting in the conference room to meet the new CEO, a group of testosterone-filled salesmen flirt mercilessly with the new CEO’s secretary. But their high status drops to low when the secretary reveals herself to be the CEO they’ve been waiting to meet.

Whether you’re creating a character, establishing a relationship, or shifting the power dynamic between characters, status tools will serve you well. Characters come to life when status comes into play.