ABSTRACT

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.

part One|107 pages

Histories, theories and questions of social justice

chapter 2|16 pages

Histories of audiencing

On evidence, mythology and nostalgia

chapter 3|15 pages

Disrupting the audience as monolith

chapter 4|15 pages

Who?, Why? and How?

The contribution of sociology to the study of arts audiences

chapter 6|15 pages

Which global? Which local?

Aucitya, Rasa, development, Àṣẹ and other demands on the audience

chapter 7|13 pages

Forced experiences

Shifting modes of audience involvement in immersive performances

part Two|116 pages

Policies, politics and practices

chapter 8|12 pages

Alan Brown in conversation

chapter 9|16 pages

Are we the baddies?

Audience development, cultural policy and ideological precarity

chapter 10|18 pages

At what cost?

Working class audiences and the price of culture

chapter 13|14 pages

Breaking barriers

The role of the audience in Interactive theatre in Bangladesh

chapter 14|12 pages

Audience engagement and the production of efficacious theatre

Case studies from Ghana

chapter 15|12 pages

Critical perspectives on valuing culture

Tensions and disconnections between research, policy and practice

part Three|150 pages

Methods, methodologies and understanding audiences

chapter 17|14 pages

Mixing methods in audience research practice

A multi-method(ological) discussion

chapter 18|15 pages

Quantifying dance in the audience's mind

A methodological quest for neuroscience research

chapter 20|18 pages

Audience interaction

Approaches to researching the social dynamics of live audiences

chapter 23|19 pages

Creative methods and audience research

Affordances and radical potential

chapter 24|17 pages

Ethics in audience research

By the book or on the hop?

part Four|153 pages

Shorts

chapter 25|8 pages

Affect

chapter 26|7 pages

Agency

chapter 27|9 pages

Co-creation

Igniting response-ability: co-creating one-on-one audience experience

chapter 28|6 pages

Covid-19

chapter 29|5 pages

Data

chapter 30|6 pages

Dialogue

Like a book group for theatre: transforming post-show dialogue

chapter 31|7 pages

Integrated and inclusive

chapter 32|5 pages

Labour

Lighting applause

chapter 33|6 pages

Language

Audiences for Poetry Festival Singapore

chapter 34|6 pages

Laughter

Relational dynamics

chapter 35|6 pages

Marginalia

Notes from research-creation on audiences and the public imagination

chapter 36|7 pages

Memory

‘False,’ ‘faulty’ or ‘creative’: the after-life of theatre performance in children's memory

chapter 37|5 pages

One-to-one

chapter 38|7 pages

Pantomime

chapter 39|6 pages

Post-humanity

chapter 40|7 pages

Post-show

chapter 41|6 pages

Rehearsal

chapter 42|6 pages

Relaxed

chapter 43|7 pages

Risk

Confinement, infiltration and alienation

chapter 44|6 pages

Sickness

The sick body and spectatorship: thinking through endometriosis

chapter 45|7 pages

Thresholds

chapter 46|6 pages

Touch

The creative accessibility design: using touch as an accessible tool in theatre

chapter |9 pages

Afterword

Covid-19, audiences and the future of the performing arts