As a guitar student, once in a while you will need to perform before an audience. It can be a school assembly, class production, concert, recital or simply at home in front of parents, friends or relatives, colleagues (if you are an adult) …etc. In general it shouldn’t be a difference the concert or the performance is the same. That’s the moment when the piece is presented to the listeners regardless who and how many are they. Usually people tend to be more nervous or let’s say more conscious if the performance is formal in compare to informal performance (at home, just for one friend and so).
To bring a piece a life is a long process, it starts with choosing it, liking it, evaluating the individual technical abilities, learning it preferably by heart, dressing it up and of course practicing it enough so the one can be confident…
This process in fact includes its performance as well, the more one piece is performed before an audience-the better it becomes. We can see even the big names they have an amount of pieces (repertoire) that they play for years and in which they are so good, They perform those pieces on concerts tours etc… So for you is not necessary to play new piece each concert or performance.
Even if you are a beginner guitar player it’s a good idea to start building your repertoire from the very beginning. For example you can start with three pieces which are well polished and you know them very well. It is not important how difficult are they. Those are pieces that you can perform with confidence.
With the time, once you learn a new piece, you can add it to your repertoire or you can replace some of the others with it. The number of pieces that you can keep in your repertoire depends on how much time you can invest in maintaining this repertoire and keeping it always fresh. In the same time, you need time for learning new things and techniques which can allow you to gradually change the pieces as you progress. Working in this way you will always be ready for performance because you have a repertoire consequently you will have less stress while performing.