ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which theories of audience vary between locations and how debates vital to one context are absent or completely reformulated in another. Relationships between concepts shift and move. In this case, explorations of Aucitya (propriety), community, and rasa (emotion or taste) in the Sanskrit tradition of Indian theatre are juxtaposed with explorations of community, àṣẹ (authority), spirituality and development in the Nigerian context (with a focus on the Yorùbá people). Each of these contexts presents a unique set of debates about what an audience is and what an audience does. While this chapter introduces some of those debates in their specific contexts, it also turns to questions of interactions between theories and traditions. What would it mean to speak about a global audience? What are the pitfalls of such a notion? How does one position the debates from within their own specific context amidst the richer possibilities presented by the multiple contexts of the planetary scale?
