the audience

• audience always participates
• the audience forms a community
• no two audience members ever have exactly the same experience

conventions (aka the rules of theatre)

• standings of acting change over time
• conventions vary between cultures and between genres
• conventions evolve over time
• conventions can be highly visible or almost invisible (impact whether or not they are noticed)
• the sum of conventions = style (style is a set of rules that determine how theatre represents reality, how set design works, how actors behave)
• conventions govern the actor/audience relationship and audience behaviour (in some forms it is acceptable for the actor to break the 4th wall, in others it isn’t, when it is acceptable to laugh etc)

classical greece c 450 BCE

• all day events
• huge outdoor amphitheatres (15-20k ppl)
• formal actors, informal audience
• social audiences

roman empire c 100-300 CE

• audience behaviour v passionate, informal by current standards
• known for leaving theatre, not paying attention
• huge range of options of entertainment
• prologues
• social audiences
• plays written to engage audience

medieval europe 1350-1550 CE

• theatre produced by amateurs (local churches, guilds)
• no professional actors
• audience often knew performers
• audience had familiarity, could be included in productions themselves
• suspension of disbelief was much less likely due to relationship
• actors breaking character, addresing audience common
• most common ‘stage’ was a pageant wagon
• wagons moved through towns
• audience not necessarily fixed, not necessarily seated
• sometimes had to follow wagon, or watch several pass by

early modern europe 1550-1850 CE

• enclosed theatres, need for artificial light
• focus on whole social experience
• actors directly addressed audiences in more conventional ways - more asides, soliloquys
• cheapest seats closest to stage
• most expensive seats had best view of audience
• audience members could sometimes even sit on stage (best seats)
• move towards dimming lights over audience in this time, containing audience
• evidence that people would buy food, conduct business, purchase prostitutes in theatre

passive audience 1850-present

• continue to participate in popular things
• become passive in most, less participation
• auditorium dimmed
• acting becoming more realistic
• evolution of the fourth wall
• rise of realism
• actors don’t acknowledge the audience, focus on each other
• effect is that the audience members are drawn into play emotionally
• more directly engaged with story

activist audiences 1900-present

• react against realism, passive audience
• using theatre to change society
• politically motivated theatre aims to change society and empower audiences to create social examples
• examples

1. agit-prop theatre (1920s-1930s) marxist messages communicated to workers (not realistic, songs, skits, not often in theatres, goal is to spread political ideas)
2. bertolt brecht (1898-1956) epic theatre allows audience to think critically (does not want emotional involvement, wants the audience to think about what’s wrong on stage, concerned with alienating audience purposefully to remind them that they are watching the play, to remind them why the characters are doing what they are doing, intellectual involvement)
3. augusto boal (1931-2009) theatre of the oppressed created “spect-actors” (takes passive audience, purposefully involves audience, audience can stop, replace actor, continue the scene in a different way, political agenda)