ABSTRACT
Live events are social encounters: people in a live audience do not just react to a work, they react to the people around them. Other people’s laughter, applause, coughing, fidgeting, in-breaths and silences all contribute to the experience of live events. Importantly, these behaviours are not just clues to people’s inner responses – they are public social signals that are actively interpreted by others. As a result, there are a number of connections between the organisation of large-scale audience interactions and small-scale social interactions like conversation. These connections provide a useful way of thinking about the dynamics of audience responses. It has implications for what responses we focus on, how we measure them and how we model them. It helps to explain how responses develop and propagate through an audience. It also changes our understanding of what influences people’s moment-by-moment experience of live events; performers and audience members alike.
