By Chanel Sheridan
Much of the available research on pedagogy within the study of theatre focuses on applying theatre to the classroom or on the pedagogy that comes from theatre creation. Expanding outward, even within the realm of fan studies, pedagogy still focuses on what the field can offer students and classrooms. While this is important, there is evidence of a unique form of pedagogy that exists amongst fans and audience members that has been omitted from academia. This blog post will attempt to highlight the instances of audience pedagogy found within our research and argue for the need for more research into how audiences and fans teach and learn from each other on a larger scale than what is currently available.
Nancy Baym’s chapter in Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community begins to hint at audience pedagogy by looking at the ways in which soap opera audiences interact and interpret the material. Baym showcases the different methods in which audiences interact with the material, thus teaching other fans through personalized interpretation, speculation, and informative practices such as updates and spoilers (Baym 2000). Specifically, Baym argues that “for new viewers, this collaborative interpretation can serve as training, helping them to become more sophisticated interpreters of the genre” (Baym 2000: 93). This kind of teaching and learning is also present within theatre audiences through the sharing of etiquette, the best practices for seeing theatre, and even missed details within shows themselves.
Multiple interviewees described being taught audience etiquette or had stories describing teaching audience etiquette to other audience members. For example, Michael describes how a friend turned around at a show to quiet audience members who were talking “and their response was ‘we paid good money for these seats, we can do what we want’ and she immediately ‘oh no, no, no, no’, and she explained it to them” (24Sept20217pm-Individual-RM-Transcript). Here, we can see audience members passing along the knowledge of proper audience etiquette to other audience members. While this example occurred in the theatre, there are countless examples online within blog posts detailing what to do at the theatre, such as Glen Sumi’s article “Theatre etiquette 101: Nine things that make this critic cringe” or Lakshmi Menon’s “First timer’s guide to Broadway | All you need to know” (Glenn 2023; Menon 2024).
More reflective of Baym’s ideas on speculation and interpretation are blog posts and articles which offer insights into show themselves and reflect the audiences’ method of interpretation through personalization. For example, one blog post outlines what to expect at Punkdrunk’s show The Burnt City, acting as both a guide and an interpretation of the show in which the author outlines basic information such as buying tickets and finding the venue before explaining the stories by analyzing them in connection to the Greek poems on which they are based (‘A Guide to Punchdrunk’). The author alludes to the post as an interpretation based on their personal experience, mentioning that “even as I give away everything I encountered, it would still be markedly different from what you’ll experience” (‘A Guide to Punchdrunk’). This is only one example of the interpretations of audiences, though there are countless others, many which also draw on speculation. For example, the video “Hamilton: 20 Background Details To Look For When You Rewatch” outlines small details audience members may have missed, speculating on what these small details mean. The comment section adds to this as audience members and fans add more speculative details they personally noticed, thus reflecting the same method of community interpretation Baym outlines in their article.
These examples showcase how theatre fan communities and audiences teach each other about the medium, yet there is no evidence of research into this aspect of theatre communities. What can we gain from understanding how theatre audiences teach other? What aspects of theatre and audience behaviour shift when we understand how information passes within the theatre community? The interactions amongst fans and audience members are a site of community building and warrant deeper research. It is not simply the understanding of how audiences teach one another that offers something of interest, but the ways in which pedagogy amongst these groups shapes and informs the very nature of the work itself.