By Jacob Pittini
Through our tiered audience research method, we used prompts to probe audiences for a variety of different information relating to their experiences as audience members. A key goal of this process is accumulating empirical audience data from audience members themselves in order to examine how audiences perceive, understand and produce co-presence. These prompts represent an ask for audiences to re-collect their histories, re-examine their role and re-evaluate their understandings but also cumulatively contribute to a unique sense-making process.
The overall procedure of our research methodology invites audiences to put to words feelings and beliefs which they may not be familiar with expressing. This act, of audience members externalizing their internal governing principles which subconsciously influence their behaviour as an audience member during an interview necessitates them developing consciousness of these principals which they may not have previously held. This consciousness affords our participants the opportunity to consider the nature of these principles, their origins and impact on their participation within the realm of theatre. Our methodology is therefore a bilaterally beneficial learning experience wherein our research simultaneously enhances the understandings of both interviewer and interviewee. Audiences perform a unique sense-making process where form follows function, exploring copresence while consciously experiencing copresence.
The bilateral impact of the Being Together methodology is of particular significance as it partially replicates the conditions of the very performances we survey audiences after. Paralleling the particular ontology of participatory theatre, which the show Roll Models in our data represents, we generate boundaries and then empower participants to play within them as per their individual identities, experiences and ensuing insights. Through inviting audiences to vocalize their conceptions and essentially perform their understandings of audience role we rely on a similar autopoietic exchange to that which we ask them to make sense of by asking them about co-presence and to define the role of the audience. Audiences and performers exist in a feedback loop of perception and participation which our interviews simulate as we create a frame for our interviewees to participate within.
Audience research uniquely exists at a junction between perspectives, where the researcher prompts specific performative participation, yet the subjects exert ultimate control over which experiences they share and how. The information this methodological exchange therefore provides reveals insight into a complex sense-making process on an individual basis, and “how people from different subject positions and social locations actively make sense of things by drawing on varying ‘cultural reference points, political beliefs, sexual preferences, personal histories, and immediate preoccupations’” (Sedgman p. 318, quoting Helen Freshwater p. 6). Questions about the identity and history of participants during individual interviews or emergent distinct viewpoints in group interviews emphasize the individualistic nature of audience members. This nature is clear even as they view themselves as part of a collective audience, and greater theatre community as opinions and understandings on how audience members should behave and what role they fulfill differ.
The methodological approach of our audience research is crucial to circumventing the reality that finding universal meaning is impossible through data which we characterize as deeply personal, individualized experiences. Our goal lies in the inherent ephemerality of audiences and their shifting perceptions and realities as they juxtapose to the constant experience of copresence. The experience and consciousness of copresence is a universal reality of theatre. The return to in person performances amidst pandemic necessitates a revaluation of copresence at this crucial zeitgeist while also ensuring a generally heightened awareness by all in the realm of theatre and theatre studies which we’ve sought to grasp. There is no one way to be an audience member, and there is no universal answer to our query of what the role of the audience is, but asking these questions remains worthwhile as our examination of perceptions and awareness of copresence as a fundamental aspect of theatre through the audience initiates a mutually informative sense-making process.
Our methodology found instances of audiences believing that there were right or wrong answers to our open-ended questions or noting a lack of certainty in terms of specific terminology or definitions. This points to a lack of consciousness, as in our interviews audience members gradually define and experience conceptions of audiencing subconsciously. This participation, in response to our prompts leads to a performative sense-making. This sense-making can beneficially foster a consciousness within the audience members we interview but also reveals how they may feel hyper critical of their own abilities to express their understandings or believe us to valuate them.
“This will not be the correct definition of liveness but…”
“I don’t know how to describe this…”
“A bit hard to describe I’m sorry”
“I don’t know if it’s valuable, but it’s just something I want to say”
(18Oct20217pm-Individual-RM-RH-Transcript)
“I’m trying to formulate what my answer is…”
“I meant to say something else… forget that.”
(18Oct20218pm-Individual-RM-Transcript)
“I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for”
“I just wanted to make sure I’m understanding the question”
(5Oct20218pm(J)-Individual-RM-Transcript)
“I hadn’t thought about that very much”
“I’m sorry to be so general”
“it might just be a useless thought”
(7Oct20217pm-Individual-RM-Transcript)
Erika Fischer Lichte speaks of ‘transformative aesthetics,’ how exposure to performance impacts an individual in an emergent way, as art “can change the ideas, attitudes, habits of a single, singular person” (Peric). Instead of devaluing the singular participation of an audience member because they exist as part of a greater audience, and only one part of a feedback loop, we must empower them to make sense of their own participation and value their findings. Participants may not possess a scholarly vocabulary and extensive awareness of their own perceptions of copresence but they are familiar with theatrical copresence, and audience research can replicate this copresence in order to prompt an informative and performative consciousness of individual experience. In line with Fischer Lichte’s concept of ‘transformative aesthetics’ the impact of copresence at an individual level is essential to uncovering the overall impact of any performance. Moving away from seeking to assume and define a universal impact of a performance, as we are unavoidably aware of the inherent differences within audience members, we can instead examine how audiences experience of copresence reveals fundamental realities of theatre.
Peric, Tina. “Understanding vs Experiencing: An Interview with Erika Fischer Lichte” Critical Stages issue 14, December 2016. https://www.critical-stages.org/14/understanding-versus-experiencing-interview-with-erika-fischer-lichte/
Sedgman, Kirsty. "Audience experience in an anti-expert age: A survey of theatre audience research." Theatre Research International 42, no. 3 (2017): 307-322.