The premise of a flashmob is the sudden assemblage of a group of people in a public space to perform an act and then disperse. Flashmobs can be dances, musical protests, or even a suspension of reality.

Flashmobs become truly both “in-your-face” and “in-your-space” by toying with the ideas of performativity and what Osipovich argues are the very essentials of theatrical performance.

“…theatrical performances cannot exist without (1) at lease one performer and at least one observer in the same space and at the same time, (2) a pretense on the part of the performer that the interaction between performer and observer is somehow other than what it actually is, and (3) an awareness on the part of the observer that the pretense is occurring.” (Osipovich 465)