By Meghan Lindsay
We sit in our four-paneled Zoom wall and I notice the shift in my bedroom lights as our rural power quivers. Fidgeting with fingers and browsers windows. Nervous for the sound of my partner in the background of our shared room. I introduce myself. A familiar rush of adrenaline as the research participant acknowledges their role. I, silently, acknowledge mine.
In the wake of COVID-19’s effect on the performing arts, the role of the audience has come to the forefront of institutional programming. Specifically, perceptions of comfort in theater audiences. The role of comfort was an underlying inquiry in ‘Being Together’—a research project that seeks to understand how contemporary audiences perceive feelings of ‘liveness’ and ‘realness’ and more broadly, the effect of the communal experience on audience perceptions.
I note the occasional discomfort in performing the role of researcher. I note the performativity in engaging with strangers. Our collective unease in speaking within the parameters of the digital. Our unease with ‘other.’ I note the performance of the participants as they answer my questions, doubting the validity of their responses. Questioning their credibility to answer. I note the performance of my listening. Overt—a movement of my head, a smile, a sigh, a reassuring glance. A device to affect comfort.
The interviews in ‘Being Together’ exposed performativity—specifically the performance of good audience member—as central to how audience members relate to fellow audiences, to stage performers, and to production. The audience member performs attention by smiling, gesturing, calling. In performing attention, they construct a feeling of agency in their power to affect the energy of the performance. The embodied act of creating comfort through visual and sonic cues of support. The construction of the audience as central to the success of a production.
As I traverse the interview, I note my jaw relaxing. My bodily productions of good interviewer loosen. As the perceived energy shifts from a relationship of researcher/participant to a seemingly iterative conversation, I am able to more clearly attend to listening.
Many of the participants interviewed were actively engaged in the theatre community—as actors, scholars, production members, etc. Many of the participants were white, were associated with academic institutions or formal theatre training. In interviews with these participants, we learnt that there is an ethos of expected reciprocity when performing the good audience member. A hope that by creating a positive energy as an audience, they would receive the same attention when acting as a stage performer. This speaks to how the positionality of the audience may inform certain norms of audience participation and etiquette.
Here, I question whether the contemporary Canadian audience has evolved as a reproduction of colonial discourses of national “goodness” and whether performing listening carries unmarked racialised and classed norms in its perceived benevolence. Drawing from Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson writing on “affective contagion” as a manifestation of shared emotional experience of positive transformation by audience members (Robinson, 2014, 277), we see that perceptions of collectivity, positivity, and communal experience are not universal. And that a perceived universality can cause harm. Here, I consider if performing the good audience member detracts from listening. I consider what is at stake in prioritizing feelings of benevolence within the audience-production relationship. I wonder if we can actively listen if we are still performing?
I finish the interview and I pump breast milk. I eat some chips and watch bad TV. The story of the interview vacates my brain and I rest. I remember very little.
I return to the interview transcript a month later. My only recollection was that I stacked my pillows to make it appear as if I were at a desk. I remember smiling.
Works Cited
Robinson, Dylan. “Feeling reconciliation, remaining settled.” In Theatres of Affect. Edited by Erin Hurley. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2014.