ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the point at which performing arts audiences can be said to turn into performing arts fans. Fan studies have a long history of trying to identify the point at which ‘general’ audiencing stops and fandom begins, with the definition of fandom having variously been considered to mean engaging in textual transformations, being part of dedicated fan communities, using fan objects to construct a personal narrative of self, calling oneself ‘a fan’ or simply engaging privately in intense enjoyments of cultural texts.
Rather than creating distinct ontologies to define what makes an audience member’s fan identity count as legitimate, this chapter aligns itself with those fandom scholars who have argued for understanding fandom not as a distinct set of practices, but as a complex relational network: one in which audiences’ activities are likely to shift between varying modes of audience/fan engagement over time. The chapter proposes the use of discursive methodologies (both on- and off-line) as a valuable way of drawing out the shifting intensities of audience investments over a lifetime. It details a range of ethical, practical and epistemological considerations for understanding intensities of investments through the lens of discourse. It concludes by arguing that, by disassociating itself from fan studies, audience research in the performing arts has neglected valuable insights into the behaviours and engagements of its most highly invested audiences. These fandom debates and frameworks have potential to shed fresh light on the audience experience and on questions of cultural value more broadly.
