1. Chapter 2 Theatre: The Performing Audience: Three Roles

2. The Role of the Audience The audience participates in the show through response Good theatre audience response depends on other audience members and the performance Consider: Size and Arrangement – Not to small, not too big – Theatre in the round – Make it comfortable to be seated

3. Permission: Audience members have permission to act in ways they wouldn’t otherwise act in their everyday actions. – Laugh at something funny – Cry at something emotionally moving – Applaud There is a degree of safety and assurance offered to the audience during a performance

4. Self-image of the audience – The group influences its behavior, including dress Interactive social units-interact with performers and other audience memebers

5. Audience Approval Applause Laughter Silence Curtain Call Standing Ovation Encore

6. Audience Disapproval Withhold Applause Noise Protest It signals the audience’s refusal to enter into the created world because they are alienated from the performance (intellectual, humor, language barrier, etc)

7. Cultural Expression Culture: Set of beliefs, values and social behaviors that the group shares – Consumer culture – Pop culture – Communication culture Several layers

8. Mirror of Life Theatre has the capacity to mirror the life of a culture and inform the audience about that particular culture Playwrights, directors and actors must imagine how the audience will be drawn in and respond to elements of the performance Shared culture = shared context

9. Mirror of Life Careful of drawing conclusions: – Theatre is at the center of some cultures and sidelined (peripheral in others) – It can be distorting rather than accurate (fun house mirror, magnifying mirror, etc) – Plays might be determined by audience in attendance (ticket price, gender, education)

10. Theatre as Business: The Role of the Audience The audience pays the bill It hasn’t always been this way Argument on profit vs. artistic expression Part of the cultural experience Business endorsement of performing arts

11. Changes over time Sharing companies (as in Shakespeare’s day) – People who owned companies-most valuable members owned the most shares – Could hire actors rather than let them own shares in the company – Government theatres such as in Germany-taxes helped to pay for the theatre

12. Producers-the age of American theatre – Businesspeople used theatre as a way to invest and make money off of a production – Tickets paid the bills and earned the producer money because of the investment in the production – Producers controlled the building, the production, hired the actors (now employees of the producer), found investors and advertizers

13. Corporations – Because of rising costs, power shifted again from one person to many – Business people still produced, but transferred artistic power to directors and designers (still not to the actors as it first was)

14. Not-for-profit – Came into being because of the trust busts and monopoly break-ups in the early 1900s – Most theatre production today is not-for-profit (Dakota Stage in Bismarck) – New York is still for-profit

15. Commercial business partnerships for one production Has planned open-ended runs-will be performed as long as people will come and ticket sales are profitable Most or all income is generated by ticket sales Not-for-Profit produces shows in a season and intends to do so indefinitely Plans a to produce plays with a fixed number of performances Income: 60% of ticket sales and the rest comes from donations

16. Educational Theatre: – Subsidized – Paid for through the university – Allows for more freedom in production National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)- purpose is to encourage development of the arts throughout the country Controversial because not all feel that the government should fund art when other social problems exist