Chapter 1 The Audience: Its Role and Imagination

1
Chapter 1The Audience Its Role and Imagination

• In a world of technological innovations, how has
• theater survived?
• The relationship between performer and audience
• The special nature of that relationship
• The chemistry of that contact
• We are not just in the presence of the
  performersthey are also in OUR presence.

2
Theater as a Group Experience

• Unlike other art forms, theater provides a
  communal experience
• A theater audience does not contemplate theater
  individually, but rather as individuals within a
  larger group
• Without an audience, can there be a theatrical
  event?

3
Psychology of Groups

• Gustave Le Bons theory of group behavior . . .
• A collection of people presents new
  characteristics very different from those of the
  individuals composing it
• A crowd develops a collective mind which makes
  them feel, think, and act in a manner quite
  different from that in which each individual of
  them would feel, think, and act were he in a
  state of isolation

4
Audience Makeup and the Theater Experience

• It is not just important to have an audience, but
  also to know who the audience is
• Are the audience members homogeneous or from a
  variety of backgrounds?
• Some factors that contribute to the audiences
  makeup
• Gender
• Race
• Socioeconomic background
• Geography
• Age

5
Separate Roles of Performersand Spectators

• Audience Involvement
• Aesthetic Distance
• Observed theater
• Audience participates vicariously and
  empathically
• Participatory theater
• Involves participation through Direct Action
• Creative dramatics, sociodrama, psychodrama, and
  drama therapy
• Participatory Theater is a means to another
  endits aim is not public performance

6
The Imagination of the Audience

• The audiences role in the creation of illusion
• Willing suspension of disbelief
• Believing in fantasy
• Accepting drastic shifts in time and space
• Rapid movements back and forth in time
• Anachronism
• In theater, the audience must be as willing to
  use its imagination as are the performers

7
Tools of the Imagination

• Symbol
• a sign, token, or emblem that signifies something
  else
• Metaphor
• Stating that one thing is another in order to
  describe its meaning more clearly

8
Imaginary Worlds of Theater

• REALISM
• Brought to you by Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov
• Realistic Elements of Theater
• Resembles observable reality
• Characters rooted in recognizable human truth
• Characters with life histories, motives, and
  anxieties
• Setting and costumes that reflect where real
  people would live and what they would wear

9
Imaginary Worlds of Theater

• NONREALISM
• Nonrealistic Elements of Theater
• Everything that does not conform to our
  observations of surface reality
• Poetry not prose
• Ghosts, soliloquy, and fantasy
• Abstract design elements
• Dreams and symbols
• The surface of life can never convey the whole
  truth

10
Stage Reality vs. Fact

• Whether theater is realistic, nonrealistic, or a
  combination of both, it is not the same as the
  physical reality of everyday life
• No matter how involved we become in a theatrical
  event, it is important that we are always aware
  on some level that we are in a theater