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Transcript
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