By Jacob Pittini
What risks do audiences take? Why do they take them? What contexts and structures inherent to performance perpetuate this balancing act and empower audiences to participate as they do? How do audiences perceive and describe this reality?
In our data set we have found evidence that supports the intuitive notion that audiences are generally aware and drawn to theatre for its liveness, and the perception that a theatrical experience is a constructed moment representing shared time and space.
“If it was like filmed and live streamed or something or like recorded and shown after I don’t think it would have the same impact as seeing it being created right in front of you” (24Aug2021630pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 36)
In light of our questions focusing specifically on the Kick and Push Festival as it represents a return to in-person theatre, this physical dimension is especially important to consider. Within this shared theatrical space audiences experience their surroundings through their senses constituting perception, which, to put it colloquially, is a two-way street. These surroundings include the physical environment of the theatre experience as well as all who occupy it, including other audience members and performers and other categories of creators who perceive them in turn. This perception is of course key to theatre and a part of the autopoietic feedback loop of performance. My particular focus at this junction is the notion of risk, associated with participating in a performance and how it is offset by reward in a codependent relationship characterized by the audience-performer dichotomy. I also understand participatory theatre to operate within this same risk vs reward relationship while deconstructing the audience-performer dichotomy, to an extent.
Primarily, the risk of embodied participation as strictly an audience member appears inherently perceived by our participants as less than the reward. Although audiences have an embodied presence in all live in-person performance events, there are cues that they are not the ‘focus’ so to speak and therefore less at risk of unwanted perception. These include preconceived notions about western theatre and conventions such as audiences being seated in the dark or in spatial organizations to primarily view the performers rather than each other. The role of audiences is often seen as fixed and static, requiring their presence but assessing the perception as mostly one-sided; “My view of theatre is always oh you sit in a row, and like you’re there and watch them” (22Aug2021830pm-Group-RM-Transcript2, 196). Audiences are aware that they are perceived by others and have a responsibility to receive the performance in a perceivable way. Audience members flag this awareness as key to motivating their perceivable expression of reactions such as laughing or clapping, often supplementing natural occurrences and sometimes outright replacing them; “if someone says like a joke or something, and I get the sense that something is supposed to be funny, but it doesn’t really feel funny I still like laugh” (29Aug20215pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 149). These decisions are influenced by the space and collective they are immersed in, with audience’s preconceived expectations or similar behaviour from the collective reducing the risk of enacting this presence.
Audience members thus feel protected to an extent by the audience-performer dichotomy. Despite being able to acknowledge their capacity to have an impactful embodied presence, audience members typically feel empowered and rewarded by this sense of purpose rather than at risk. Instead of risk, audience members safe in their role within the dichotomy may feel a sense of responsibility to act in a certain way; “it should be rigorous to be an audience member, to not just like sit there and kind of like only receive like they’re also um, in a way, like motivating the action on stage to kind of keep going.” (24August2021830pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 101-104).
Participatory theatre however complicates this dichotomy while not entirely deconstructing the risk vs reward relationship. For example, the existence of audience participation in the case of volunteers or pre-selected participants from the audience can actually heighten confidence and comfort in the role of audience members in contrast to their explicitly participating fellow members. One audience member recalled witnessing audience participation as; “watching the players who are part of the audience and thanking God I wasn’t one of them” (26Aug20216pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 31).
In one example, an audience member had an opportunity to participate as an audience player in the participatory Roll Models show during a tech run, after which they attended the production as an audience member. This participant found themselves “wishing that I had some sort of say” (26Aug20216pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 105) and said, “I felt like I wanted more participation” (26Aug20216pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 107) showing a desire to exert control within the performance. My consideration, and what I believe to warrant further, deeper analysis is whether an aversion to participatory theatre is due to the nature of participating, or an inherent belief that the risk has shifted to outweigh the reward in such theatrical contexts. Audiences are thrilled by risks, feeling excited by unexpected interruptions or things they perceive to go awry which actually enhance their experience as they are integrated into the performance.
“And there is also something very special and happy about having it set in a park in a very public space, open to all the elements. In the end of our show, it began to rain, and you started to see stage managers come running and taking out the speaker and being like “oh sorry to bother you can I just because I just grab this?” So, you're seeing all the mechanics at work and there's just like something beautiful about all these people coming together, and yet the audience still transfixed on the players and even if we are kind of, um, distracted it doesn't take away from the show, it adds to it.” (30Aug20215pm-Group-RM-Transcript, 237-241).
These moments serve to enhance the liveness of a theatrical event and empower the audience member as a conscious participant of a specific event in a shared time and space. The reward for this is that they get something special and unique which they enjoy being a part of. The risk is part of the appeal, it relates to the inherent, desirable theatrical elements of liveness and co-presence. The risk, however, can also be a deterrent, and needs to be shouldered by the facilitators for most theatre-goers, though not all. This shouldering may occur through maintaining the dichotomy, other audience members stepping up to participate, or performers/creators establishing clear expectations for audience participants.
Participatory theatre gradually affords more power to the audience members and with-it greater risk and responsibility which has the potential to lead to a greater reward. Audiences thus necessitate a complex duality of fixed expectations and room for experimentation in their participation, so they may enjoy the empowering process of becoming a similar subject of perception as performer/creators without being restrained by the risks they perceive as they construct their understandings of their role as audience members.