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Theatre & AUDIENCE
You are the topic...You are the centre.
You are the occasion. You are the
reasons why.
Peter Handke, Offending the Audience
(1966, p121)
Theatre & Society
Society & theatre.
Billington: what are the links? political. i.e. the politics of the times
seeps into the playwright’s work. He believes we can gauge the
temper of the times through the both new writing and revivals.
• We want to contextualise the plays:
• Who was/is the playwright? What do we know about him/her?
• When was the play written?
• What was happening in Britain around that time: socially culturally,
economically?
• What was happening internationally around that time?
• Can we find themes in the play that reflect this period?
Theatre & Society
http://www.theatrevoice.com/2218/billingtonon-the-state-of-the-nation/
“The more plays I read, the more I was struck by
this notion of theatre as a mirror of the
nation”
Audience
• Peter Brook: “A man walks across [an] empty
space whilst someone is watching him, and
this is all that is needed for an act of theatre
to be engaged”.
• Jerzy Growtowski: “Theatre is what takes
place between spectator and actor”
.
Why are British and American theatre audiences so different? (Guardian,
2011)
Is your audience too old? Outrageous Fortune (TDF: 2010), a new book about
the state of contemporary American theatre.
Who should playwrights be writing for – themselves or the audience? And if
the audience, who should be in that audience?" (Guardian 2010)
• Educated audiences 'let down by theatres and cinemas' says Nicholas
Hytner. Theatre companies and film makers … are obsessed with the youth
market. (Telegraph 2009)
• West End theatres are employing bouncers in an attempt to tackle
increasingly drunken audiences who misbehave during performances.
(Telegraph, 2009)
Telegraph 2011
Edinburgh Festival 2011: The increasing role of audience participation.
Audiences expected to play bigger roles in shows
• Audience by Belgian company Ontroerend Goed hinges on what the crowd
does when a performer viciously turns on one of them.
• The Oh F--- Moment: moments of hideous personal embarrassment
• choreographs a female performer’s every move (Tania El Khoury @ Forest
Fringe)
• embark on a one-person odyssey through the city (You Once Said Yes)
• enter alone the world of a child’s bedroom with the help of an iPad (Alma
Mater).
Audience
• Latin, verb audire - to hear
• Implies audiences have been thought of
primarily as listeners, not to see.
• At odds with root of Theatre: ‘place of seeing’
Audience: plural or singular?
• Usually we refer to an audience as ‘it’: a
collective.
• But this collective is made up of individuals
who bring their own cultural reference points,
political beliefs, sexual preferences, and
personal histories etc.
• We don’t respond to a piece of theatre from one
pov - we draw on our collective experiences of
who we are, where we’ve come from.
• Oh what a Lovely War: a soldier will respond
differently to me, and I might respond to the play
at times as a woman who feels empathy with the
woman on stage, or as a sister whose brother is
overseas, and my place in society could impact
how I respond.
• A useful reminder that a single person can
experience multiple responses to a show
• How might this reflect a tension among
spectators: the collective audience?
For example: community.
Can the notion of a tension among spectators
can help us to understand society a bit better?
For example: community.
The notion of a tension among spectators can help us to
understand society a bit better.
• Being an audience member reflects what is at stake in
our understanding of the nature of community
• In today’s urban setting, it is impossible to know that
the people we sit next to on the tube, the train , at our
local favourite restaurant share the same language, the
same politics , believes, identify, or culture.
• To assume is to perhaps cause offence.
• So, although we speak of ‘an audience’ there may be several distinct co-existing
audiences, gathered together who adopt
contrasting views.
• Does this idea challenge the notion that
theatre can move and change all who witness
it? How can it, if the collective is individual?
• Think back to our exploration of theatre through
theory. We discussed the notions of the text, the
author and the reader of that text (or, how the
audience respond to a performance).
• The author’s intent is not in the equation
anymore (death of the author) - the meaning of a
play does not rest with him or her. The meaning
rests with the audience who is responding to the
work from their personal cultural, social
situations.
An audience’s frame of reference
brings meaning to the show.
• The value of a text - a performance- becomes
a product, of the shared interpretations of a
communitywhich pass judgement upon it.
• How a play or a performance is received says
as much about that society as it does about
their views on art.
suspicion, frustration and contempt:
attitudes towards audiences (Freshwater: 38)
• historically, there has been anti-theatrical
prejudice.
• The persecution of actors ,
• Christian preachers who saw popular
theatrical spectacles as a conspiracy to
enslave human souls and rejected them for
pagan worship and association with
pleasure....
• puritans saw play-going as a sin.
• Where was this fear stemming from?
• not necessarily fear of theatre practitioners ,
• but of “an obsession with the arousal of the
audience through the immorality of theatrical
display”.
• Freshwater goes on to state: many theatre
practitioners hold an ambivalent relationship
with audiences.
• this ambivalence is evident in conflicted
relationship between performers and
professional spectators.
• How to explain these expressions of frustration with, and contempt
and hatred of audiences issuing from the theatre?
• some statements grounded in a fear of crowds, or distain for the
masses, or anger at those who cannot give a performance the deep
concentration it deserves...
• BUT the single most powerful reason for these aggressive attacks is
the continuing investment in the idea that theatre-going should be
an improving and educational activity. ... Ultimately, it seems that
the suspicion, contempt and aggression directed towards audiences
are the result of the belief that performance should somehow be
‘good for you’ and that you as an audience might fail to appreciate
that.
Spectacle
• Audience is not passive
• Part of experience
• Gaddafi rallies - Libya: lose your collective
identity.
• w/ theatre we are not trying to take them
over
phenomena
•
•
•
•
we are individuals
we have bodies
but we meet for all kinds of social occasions
Theatre & Society
GROUPS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Life, society, living, people – Audience
Culture
Politics
Entertainment or Education?
The commodity of art / west end vs fringe / subsidised theatre:
Globalisation
The Nation
Community / forms of theatre/ audience /
Feeling
Social cohesion / breaking boundaries
Multiculturalism
Identity – Nation