Download or read book Theatre Audiences written by Susan Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Susan Bennett's highly successful Theatre Audiences is a unique full-length study of the audience as cultural phenomenon, which looks at both theories of spectatorship and the practice of different theatres and their audiences. Published here in a brand new updated edition, Theatre Audiences now includes: • a new preface by the author • a stunning extra chapter on intercultural theatre • a revised up-to-date bibliography. Theatre Audiences is a must-buy for teachers and students interested in spectatorship and theatre audiences, and will be valuable reading for practitioners and others involved in the theatre.

Download or read book The Roman Theatre and Its Audience written by Richard C. Beacham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a general account of the Roman theater and its audience, and records some of the results of the author's experiments in constructing a full-scale replica stage based upon the wall paintings at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and producing Roman plays upon it.

Download or read book Audience as Performer written by Caroline Heim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Actors always talk about what the audience does. I don’t understand, we are just sitting here.' Audience as Performer proposes that in the theatre, there are two troupes of performers: the actors and the audience. Although academics have scrutinised how audiences respond, make meaning and co-create while watching a performance, little research has considered the behaviour of the theatre audience as a performance in and of itself. This insightful book describes how an audience performs through its myriad gestural, vocal and paralingual actions, and considers the following questions: If the audience are performers, who are their audiences? How have audiences’ roles changed throughout history? How do talkbacks and technology influence the audience’s role as critics? What influence does the audience have on the creation of community in theatre? How can the audience function as both consumer and co-creator? Drawing from over 140 interviews with audience members, actors and ushers in the UK, USA and Austrialia, Heim reveals the lived experience of audience members at the theatrical event. It is a fresh reading of mainstream audiences’ activities, bringing their voices to the fore and exploring their emerging new roles in the theatre of the Twenty-First Century.

Download or read book Theatre and Audience written by Lois Weaver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does theatre do for – and to – those who witness, watch, and participate in it? Theatre & Audience provides a provocative overview of the questions raised by theatrical encounters between performers and audiences. Focusing on European and North American theatre and its audiences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it explores belief in theatre's potential to influence, impact and transform. Illustrated by examples of performance which have sought to generate active audience involvement – from Brecht's epic theatre to the Blue Man Group – it seeks to unsettle any simple equation between audience participation and empowerment. Foreword by Lois Weaver.

Download or read book The Reasonable Audience written by Kirsty Sedgman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-02 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Audiences are not what they used to be. Munching crisps or snapping selfies, chatting loudly or charging phones onstage – bad behaviour in theatre is apparently on the rise. And lately some spectators have begun to fight back... The Reasonable Audience explores the recent trend of ‘theatre etiquette’: an audience-led crusade to bring ‘manners and respect’ back to the auditorium. This comes at a time when, around the world, arts institutions are working to balance the traditional pleasures of receptive quietness with the need to foster more inclusive experiences. Through investigating the rhetorics of morality underpinning both sides of the argument, this book examines how models of 'good' and 'bad' spectatorship are constructed and legitimised. Is theatre etiquette actually snobbish? Are audiences really more selfish? Who gets to decide what counts as ‘reasonable’ within public space?Using theatre etiquette to explore wider issues of social participation, cultural exclusion, and the politics of identity, Kirsty Sedgman asks what it means to police the behaviour of others.

Download or read book Young Audiences Theatre and the Cultural Conversation written by John O'Toole and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers rare insights into the connection between young audiences and the performing arts. Based on studies of adolescent and post-adolescent audiences, ages 14 to 25, the book examines to what extent they are part of our society’s cultural conversation. It studies how these young people read and understand theatrical performance. It looks at what the educational components in their theatre literacy are, and what they make of the whole social event of theatre. It studies their views on the relationship between what they themselves decide and what others decide for them. The book uses qualitative and quantitative data collected in a six-year study carried out in the three largest Australian States, thirteen major performing arts companies, including the Sydney Opera House, three state theatre companies and three funding organisations. The book’s perspectives are derived from world-wide literature and company practices and its significance and ramifications are international. The book is written to be engaging and accessible to theatre professionals and lay readers interested in theatre, as well as scholars and researchers. “This extraordinary book thoroughly explains why young people (ages 14-25+) do and do not attend theatre into adulthood by delineating how three inter-linked factors (literacy, confidence, and etiquette) influence their decisions. Given that theatre happens inside spectators’ minds, the authors balance the theatre equation by focusing upon young spectators and thereby dispel numerous beliefs held by theatre artists and educators. Each clearly written chapter engages readers with astute insights and compelling examples of pertinent responses from young people, teachers, and theatre professionals. To stem the tide of decreasing theatre attendance, this highly useful book offers pragmatic strategies for artistic, educational, and marketing directors, as well as national theatre organizations and arts councils around the world. I have no doubt that its brilliantly conceived research, conducted across multiple contexts in Australia, will make a significant and original contribution to the profession of theatre on an international scale.” Jeanne Klein, University of Kansas, USA “Young Audiences, Theatre and the Cultural Conversation is a compelling and comprehensive study on attitudes and habits of youth theatre audiences by leading international scholars in the field. This benchmark study offers unique insights by and for theatre makers and administrators, theatre educators and researchers, schools, parents, teachers, students, audience members of all ages. A key strength within the book centers on the emphasis of the participant voices, particularly the voices of the youth. Youth voices, along with those of teachers and theatre artists, position the extensive field research front and center.” George Belliveau, The University of British Columbia, Canada

Download or read book Impacting Theatre Audiences written by Dani Snyder-Young and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores methods for conducting critical empirical research examining the potential impacts of theatrical events on audience members. Dani Snyder-Young and Matt Omasta present an overview of the burgeoning subfield of audience studies in theatre and performance studies, followed by an introduction to the wide range of ways scholars can study the experiences of spectators. Consisting of chapter-length case studies, the book addresses methodologies for examining spectatorship, including qualitative, quantitative, historical/historiographic, arts-based, participatory, and mixed methods approaches. This volume will be of great interest to theatre and performance studies scholars as well as industry professionals working in marketing, audience development, and community engagement.

Download or read book Theatre and its Audiences written by Kate Craddock and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-25 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the aftermath of the Covid crisis, this book brings the past, present and future of theatre-going together as it explores the nature of the relationships between performance practitioners, arts organisations and their audiences. Proposing that the pandemic forced a re-evaluation of what it means to be an audience, and combining historical and current cultural sector perspectives, the book reflects on how historical conventions have conditioned present day expectations of theatre-going in the UK. Helen Freshwater examines the ways in which developments in technology, architecture and forms of communication have influenced what is expected by and of audiences, reflecting changes in theatre's cultural status and place in our lives. Drawing on the first-hand experiences of festival director and performance practitioner Kate Craddock, it also contends that practitioners now need to turn their attention to care, access and sustainability, arguing that the pandemic taught us, above all, that it is possible to do things differently. Part vision, part provocation, part critical interrogation, Theatre and its Audiences offers an insightful appraisal of past norms and assumptions to set out a bold argument about where we should go from here.

Download or read book Engaging Audiences written by B. McConachie and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-11-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging Audiences asks what cognitive science can teach scholars of theatre studies about spectator response in the theatre. Bruce McConachie introduces insights from neuroscience and evolutionary theory to examine the dynamics of conscious attention, empathy and memory in theatre goers.

Download or read book Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience written by Rose Biggin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first full-length monograph to focus on Punchdrunk, the internationally-renowned theatre company known for its pioneering approach to immersive theatre. With its promises of empowerment, freedom and experiential joy, immersive theatre continues to gain popularity - this study brings necessary critical analysis to this rapidly developing field. What exactly do we mean by audience “immersion”? How might immersion in a Punchdrunk production be described, theorised, situated or politicised? What is valued in immersive experience - and are these values explicit or implied? Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience draws on rehearsals, performances and archival access to Punchdrunk, providing new critical perspectives from cognitive studies, philosophical aesthetics, narrative theory and computer games. Its discussion of immersion is structured around three themes: interactivity and game; story and narrative; environment and space. Providing a rigorous theoretical toolkit to think further about the form’s capabilities, and offering a unique set of approaches, this book will be of significance to scholars, students, artists and spectators.

Download or read book Architecture Actor and Audience written by Iain Mackintosh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the contribution the design of a theatre can make to the theatrical experience. It also examines the failure of many modern theatres to appeal to audiences and theatre people.

Download or read book Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts written by Matthew Reason and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts represents a truly multi-dimensional exploration of the inter-relationships between audiences and performance. This study considers audiences contextually and historically, through both qualitative and quantitative empirical research, and places them within appropriate philosophical and socio-cultural discourses. Ultimately, the collection marks the point where audiences have become central and essential not just to the act of performance itself but also to theatre, dance, opera, music and performance studies as academic disciplines. This Companion will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates, as well as to theatre, dance, opera and music practitioners and performing arts organisations and stakeholders involved in educational activities.

Download or read book Theatre of the Unimpressed written by Jordan Tannahill and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)

Download or read book Theatre and Politics written by Joe Kelleher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the first titles in this vibrant and eye-catching new series of short, sharp, shots for theatre students.

Download or read book Political Dramaturgies and Theatre Spectatorship written by Liz Tomlin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we mean when we describe theatre as political today? How might theatre-makers' provocations for change need to be differently designed when addressing the precarious spectator-subject of twenty- first century neoliberalism? In this important study Liz Tomlin interrogates the influential theories of Jacques Rancière to propose a new framework of analysis through which contemporary political dramaturgies can be investigated. Drawing, in particular, on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Lilie Chouliaraki and Judith Butler, Tomlin argues that the capacities of the contemporary and future spectator to be 'effected' or 'affected' by politically-engaged theatre need to be urgently re-evaluated. Central to this study is Tomlin's theorized figuration of the neoliberal spectator-subject as precarious, individualized and ironic, with a reduced capacity for empathy, agency and the ability to imagine better futures. This, in turn, leads to a predilection for a response to injustice that is driven by a concern for the feelings of the subject-self, rather than concern for the suffering other. These characteristics are argued to shape even those spectator-subjects towards the left of the political spectrum, thus necessitating a careful reconsideration of new and long-standing dramaturgies of political provocation. Dramaturgies examined include the ironic invitations of Made in China and Martin Crimp, the exploration of affect in Kieran Hurley's Heads Up, the new sincerity that characterizes the work of Andy Smith, the turn to the staging of the spectators' 'other' in Developing Artists' Queens of Syria and Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin's Confirmation, and the community activism of Common Wealth's The Deal Versus the People.

Download or read book Performing Nostalgia written by Susan Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this trenchant work, Susan Bennett examines the authority of the past in modern cultural experience and the parameters for the reproduction of the plays. She addresses these issues from both the viewpoints of literary theory and theatre studies, shifting Shakespeare out of straightforward performance studies in order to address questions about his plays and to consider them in the context of current theoretical debates on historiography, post-colonialism and canonicity.

Download or read book Audience Engagement in the Performing Arts written by Ben Walmsley and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-11 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the concept of audience engagement from a number of complementary perspectives, including cultural value, arts marketing, co-creation and digital engagement. It offers a critical review of the existing literature on audience research and engagement, and provides an overview of established and emerging methodologies deployed to undertake research with audiences. The book focusses on the performing arts, but draws from a rich diversity of academic fields to make the case for a radically interdisciplinary approach to audience research. The book’s underlying thesis is that at the heart of audience research there is a mutual exchange of value wherein audiences ideally play the role of strategic partners in the mission fulfilment of arts organisations. Illustrating how audiences have traditionally been side-lined, homogenised and vilified, it contends that the future paradigm of audience studies should be based on an engagement model, wherein audiences take their rightful place as subjects rather than objects of empirical research.