The presented historical review of genres of stage shows along with their familiar context of fairs and carnivals serves to show that performance art as a representative of popular culture, once an alternative to high culture, functions well in the circumstances of commodification, which characterize the contemporary consumption society. Today’s “topography” of performance has, of course, changed — the stage on a public/fair square has been replaced by the screens of TVs and laptops; however — as is indicated by an analysis of selected TV shows, Internet portals and websites — they have been appropriated by their creators, as well as “creative” users of these old, unofficial forms of popular culture. This process resulted not only in consolidation of a canon of genre and aesthetic stage tropes, recently enriched by new variants and executions (revue, cabaret, circus, buffoonery, etc.), but also widespread acceptance of “stage philosophy”. The stage today seems to be the most vital reservoir of aesthetic conclusions, for average viewers, producers of news programs, TV series, tabloids, Internet videos, press magazines on the one side, main actors on the political stage — on the other. While marginalizing official forms of public life, once current, expressive, and prone to violation only at amusement shows, it successively wins over the market of pop-cultural manifestations of the public sphere. While becoming a matrix of the postmodern consumer identity, it often serves the purposes of the public sphere, imposing attractive (and thus popular) forms of public life. These forms, while feeding off aesthetics and ethics
of the stage, appropriate private lives of many people, contributing towards the vanishing of borders between the public and the private, or even intimate
