What UK Spectators Know: Understanding How We Come to Value Theatre

Abstract

This essay reexamines the role of empirical research in scholarship on spectators. Within the context of political debates in the UK about cultural value and, in particular, the value of the performing arts in relation to other claims on public funding, it reports on attempts to counter the historical battle between instrumental and intrinsic value with new information on what spectators actually value in their theatregoing experiences. After reviewing public-policy debates with regard to these questions, the essay moves on to describe a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council during 2013–14 on “Theatre Spectatorship and Value Attribution” (TSVA). The objectives of TSVA were to drill down into audience experiences of attending theatre, focusing on phenomenological self-description and analysis in order to understand how those specific experiences were valued (or not) by spectators. The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Young Vic, and the Theatre Royal Plymouth (Drum) collaborated with researchers to study spectators in relation to fourteen productions. Surveys, structured interviews, and creative workshops were employed to collect the data. TVSA also investigated whether changes occur in audience spectators’ thinking about their theatre experience over time. The project found that sociality is interwoven with value in theatre experiences, and that social interaction, stimulating thought, and connections to spectators’ lives and the world are deeply valued attributes of the sample. The essay concludes with an appraisal of the research results and suggestions for future research that would combine empirical with analytic methods.

Empty Bench in Indonesian Performing Arts Studies: Audience

“…This condition also affects the curriculum development at art institutes in Indonesia. Thus, this fact is in line with what Reinelt (2014) has explained, in that there is a 'methodological gap.' That Indonesian arts institute does not offer training in the social sciences techniques used to research the audience in depth.…”

British satire, everyday politics: Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci and Charlie Brooker

“…3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcFaizGw860 4. For an interesting critical discussion of 'the audience' and the politics of audience reception studies, see Reinelt (2014). We share many of Reinelt's observations on the limitations of an instrumental view of the worth of performance, and while we would not seek to rehearse common debates on intrinsic value, we do agree that sociality, engagement and ongoing discussion would be an important methodological adaptation for audience studies to contemplate.…”

Audience Experience in an Anti-expert Age: A Survey of Theatre Audience Research

“…However, U&G's urge to refocus surrounding cultural participation will necessarily shape audience experience, Bennett's work 'focuses more on culturally specific paratheatrical determinants of audience reception than on actual spectatorial strategies of viewing', 37 and so can not be considered part of the audience research tradition. Whereas, as Janelle Reinelt explains, the spectatorship work pioneered by authors such as Bennett and Herbert Blau has sought either to theoretically frame 'the problems of the audience' or to describe 'the reception of particular performances' through critically-informed descriptions of aesthetics and phenomenology 38 , audience studies has been built upon a shared commitment to mapping the ways diverse audience members make sense of and find meaning in their own experiences. Conversely, where theatre studies has tried to capture data on audience experience in the past, this often requires scholars to work with researchers from other disciplines 39 , or to talk to a few handpicked attendees (who are often professionally or academically involved in theatre themselves).…”

“…tellingomission' in performance scholarship of 'the theories and analytic approaches generated by cultural studies'. 15 The first is a possible 'contempt or fear of audiences on the part of artists (and, by association, scholars)'. 16 The second is a methodological lacuna within the discipline, which has not traditionally offered training in those analytical methods that study the interplay between qualitative and quantitative data (often called 'qualiquantitative' or 'qualiquant' research), instead tending to direct ethnographic enquiries towards 'insider knowledge of artistic organizations, rehearsal processes, or other research problems more related to production than reception'.…”