What IS performance?

I glean from Carlson's introduction is that the very act of avoiding a concrete definition of performance gives freedom to the art of exploring it. Because the arts are so subjective in nature and we all see beauty in different forms of expressions and mediums, my personal definition of "performance" is probably going to be very different than someone else's, which brings me to think that the issue of importance here seems to be more that we discuss it and can come at the conversation with a mutual understanding. So, is the definition that it will always evade a true definition?

As our definition of "good theatre" is constantly evolving, why wouldn't the perimeters the define performance also evolve? Does performance mean, in some ways, that we are putting on behaviors rather than investing in living within the world of imagined circumstances? Something that stood out to me from reading the States article, The Phenomenology of Theatre, actually came from a connection to the Fuchs' article, EF's Visit to a Small Planet which I'm sure we've all read- but I started thinking about the idea that each piece of theatre written has its own standards of the World, it functions and experiences differently than we do in our own, and to superimpose our knowledge and definitions on the experiences that occur within that realm doesn't work, because it has its own sense of self. When actors lend themselves to these circumstances and live in the World defined by the play, is that a performance if it is lived truthfully, or is exercising the skill required to live truthfully in the world precisely what makes the act a performance (as referenced page 3 paragraph 2)?

To bring in another section of States' article, I want to discuss how the mimetic theory- or the imitation or expression of something rather than the action of truly doing or experiencing it- is indicative of what we are taught to believe is "good acting", and that if, as actors, we are truly experiencing and doing, an audience is more likely to go on the journey with us than if we're faking it. On some level, it has to always be mimetic in nature, or are we truly going to kill Polonius through the curtain, drown ourselves, and drink poison in a production of Hamlet? This duality, that Schechner labels "restored behavior," points out that we have to have a certain awareness of self while living in the world of the play, but where is the line between performing the action and endowing it with meaning?

I haven't discovered the answers to these questions yet, but as this article has encouraged more questions than it answers, I feel like the definition of performance can't be put into a neat little box and should be something that inspires dialogue rather than offer an easy solution.