1. The Audience
Center Stage!

2. The Audience
• The most important relationship in the theatre
is the Actor-Audience relationship – why
would that be? Why is that different from
other similar art forms or performances?

3. The Audience
• Each theatre performance is unique and
occurs in front of an audience
• Live performances are dynamic and exciting
• The audience has an
effect on performers

4. The Audience
• Aesthetic Distance: viewer must be separate
from the performance in order to experience
its aesthetic qualities
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: we know it’s
not real, but we choose to believe it anyway
• Conventions: the rules (think back to the
small planet)

5. Audiences
Through
History

6. Sacred and Religious
• The Greeks and Romans
– Theatre was part of religious rites that served the
whole city, so they were big events
– Even women were allowed to attend! Whoa!
• Medieval
– Theatre started up as a part of the Catholic mass
to help teach the Bible stories to the common
folks who didn’t speak Latin

7. Professional Theatres
• In the Renaissance, theatres were making money
rather than making religious points and pledges
• Public stages were open air and also open to
almost all classes
• Private stages were usually
indoors and only open to the
upper classes
• Italian theatre architecture ended up
shaping audiences
for centuries to come
– Box, pit, gallery

8. To See and Be Seen
• 16th and 17th century audiences sometimes
included some hoity-toity rich folks actually
sitting on the stage – there to be seen more
than to see the play

9. Democratic Theatre
• 19th Century
• Return of the working classes to the theatre
• Fan-shaped seating with good seats
throughout the theatre

10. Sidebar: What a Riot…
• Astor Place Riots
• The Rite of Spring
• Playboy of the Western
World
• The Plough and the Stars
There are four famous events when
audiences rioted because there were so
impressed by a certain actor or so
outraged by a specific play. When was
the last time you got excited enough by a
play or movie to riot?

11. Sidebar: Cradle Will Rock
During the Depression, part of the
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
was the Federal Theatre Project (FTP)
designed to put theatre people back
to work. One of shows that was
supported by the FTP was Cradle Will
Rock by Marc Blitzstein and directed
by Orson Welles. It was a
controversial, pro-union musical that
ended up being canceled the day
before it was supposed to open. At
which point, the audience marched
down the street to a new theatre
where Blitzstein started performing
the show on his own. One by one, the
actors stood up out of the audience
and took up their parts. Tim Robbins
directed a movie about this event, also
called Cradle Will Rock. If you ever get
a chance… check it out! It’s a great
story about the power of theatre! 11

12. Non-Western Theatres
• Spontaneous and responsive audiences
• Blurring boundaries between performers and
This is obviously way
audience oversimplified. We’ll touch more
on this later in the semester

13. Contemporary Audiences
• Extremely varied people
• Extremely varied venues
• Extremely varied topics
• Not always used to live theatre the way
historical audiences
might have been

14. Who goes and does not go to the
theatre?
• Audience trends are flat or in decline. The percentage of the U.S.
adult population attending non-musical theater has declined from
13.5 percent (25 million people) in 1992 to 9.4 percent (21 million
people) in 2008. The absolute size of the audience has declined by
16 percent since 1992.
• The number of adults who have attended musical theater has
grown since 1992, but remains largely constant as a percentage of
the population.
• Attendance trends do not seem primarily related to ticket prices.
Statistical models predict that a 20 percent price hike in low-end
subscription or single tickets will reduce total attendance by only 2
percent. These data suggest that other facts are likely affecting the
demand for theater.
National Endowment for the Arts Announces Report on Nonprofit Theaters
So basically… there are fewer
First NEA overview of nonprofit theater network in the United States people going to the theatre these
December 15, 2008
days. And I want to change that!
Maybe starting with you!

15. Rules of being a good audience
member
Dude,
Shut up!

16. • Thou shalt not be an ignorant audience member
• Thou shalt not be late
• Thou shalt not bring food and drink into the theatre
unless otherwise notified
• Thou shalt turn off they cell phone or other electronic
devices (not merely silence it – and not vibrate!)
• Thou shalt not text or instant message (this is a
particular pet peeve of Ms. Goff)
• Thou shalt not take video or still pictures of the
performance
• Thou shalt not talk during the performance
• Thou shalt not put thy feet on the backs of seats
• Thou shalt avoid leaving the theatre while a
performance is in progress
• Thou shalt laugh, cry, gasp, or applaud as appropriate

17. The Critic
• An audience of one – Often the person who
stands between the performance and the
prospective audience – critics sometimes have
the power to make or break a show
• What is Criticism?
– To find fault (the negative version of the word)
– To understand and appraise (the more useful version)
• Could write for websites, newspapers, academic
journals, etc.
• Description, analysis, interpretation, judgment

18. Two Broad Types of Criticism
 Descriptive criticism
 An attempt to describe as clearly and accurately as
possible what is happening in a performance
 Established by Aristotle (4th century B.C.E. Greek
philosopher)
 Prescriptive criticism
 The critic not only describes what has been done but
offers advice and sometimes even insists on what
should be done
 Established by Horace (1st century B.C.E. Roman
writer)

19. Criticism
Click through the next few slides and quiz
yourself to see if you can identify the difference
between Descriptive and Prescriptive Criticism.

20. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that
is serious, complete, and of a certain
magnitude.” (Aristotle)
Descriptive

21. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“Whatever the lesson you would convey, be
brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what
is said and faithfully retain it.” (Horace)
Prescriptive

22. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“When authors take their plots from history,
they must be careful not to depart too widely
from the records.” (Castelvetro)
Prescriptive

23. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“All works of art which deserve their name have
a happy ending.” (Joseph Wood Krutch)
Depending on your POV, this
could be either…

24. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“The subject *of the play+ once chosen, write in
prose, and divide the matter into three acts of time,
seeing to it, if possible, that in each one the space
of the day be not broken.” (Lope de Vega)
Prescriptive

25. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“Imagine certain people in a certain situation:
you will get a comic scene by turning the
situation around and reversing the roles.” (Henri
Bergson)
Descriptive

26. Descriptive or Prescriptive?
“The Theater of the Absurd has renounced
arguing about the absurdity of the human
condition; it merely presents it in being.”
(Martin Esslin)
Descriptive

27. The Theorist
• Like the Critic, but tends to look beyond the one
performance into a larger context
• Theory: “an intellectual construct created to
explain or predict a phenomenon.” (35)
– Systematic (reasoned and orderly)
– Internally consistent (don’t contradict yourself)
– Sufficient (theory gives all the necessary info to
understand)
– Congruent (theory takes into account all the evidence
– it doesn’t just ignore the stuff that doesn’t agree)

28. Some Theories
So here we go… let’s take a look at some
theories that people use to find meaning in
plays.

29. Liberal Humanism
• Good art is always good and good for you!
• Approach the text with no pre-knowledge of the
artist or the time period.
• Universal themes, moral of the story both important
• “The Individual” can exist independently of culture,
society, class, etc.
• Subtlety is better than being overt/explicit.
Understated feeling, emotions arising from
composition, and ideas/themes emerging through
symbolism are all highly valued.
• Asks “What are the moral and artistic merits of this
pieces of theatre?”

30. Red Riding Hood -
Liberal Humanism
• Good moral
message
• Virtue triumphs
• Fairly explicit,
clearly children’s
literature, so not
worthy of serious
study

31. Freud/Psychoanalysis
• Tries to take psycho-analytic structure and apply to characters and
situations in art.
• Terms
– ID: base, animal desires
– Superego : Hyper-rational/moral thought, keeps things in control
– Ego: The conscious self
– Conscious/Unconscious mind - Division between what we are
aware of, and the influences of repressed or transferred
memories, emotions, experiences.
– Oedipus Complex - The desire on the part of children to supplant
their parents.
• Asks “Why do characters do what they do, and do
they know why they act the way they do?”

32. Hamlet - Freud Style
• Why does it take so long
for Hamlet to kill his
uncle?
• Does Hamlet understand
his own hesitations and
emotions?
• What might be the
symbolic meaning of the
second appearance of the
ghost?

33. Marxist Critique
• Class and economic condition the primary driver of all
human activity/interactions
• Struggle between classes drives human history
• History is on a trajectory that leads to the
“Proletarian Revolution” where the laboring class will
also be the ruling class.
• The ruling class will use its power and influence to
maintain their power and authority.
• Asks “How does economics impact character actions
and events? How does class? How are economics
reflected in the work of art?”

34. Moby Dick - A Marxist Take
• Highlight the brutal
economic system of whaling
- the toll on laborers, their
wives and families.
• Ahab as the symbol for the
voraciousness of capitalism,
whose pursuits can only end
in disaster.

35. Feminist Critique
• Call attention to the role of women in existing works
of art. Delve into works to find examples of both the
historical oppression of women and times where
women had more agency/power than might be
assumed
• Rethink the canon - Why are men so often privileged
over women?
• Asks: “How are female characters represented? Who
is creating the representation? How does gender
impact character actions and events?”

36. Feminist Critique -
Red Riding Hood
• Go back to the roots of the story – there are
several versions
– No woodsman – Red just gets eaten
– Woodsman saves the two women after
their bad decision
– Red escapes on her own
– Woodsman rescues them from one wolf,
then a second wolf comes and Red and
grandma drown him in a trough on their
own
• Each of those says something different about
the role of women, doesn’t it?

37. Queer Theory
• Exploring homosexual relationships and
themes in a text and the author’s own life
• Reexamines the assumption of a heterosexual
norm
• Asks “what is the role of gender and sexuality
in the text and in society? How are
homosexual characters represented? How
are heterosexual characters represented? By
whom?”

38. Hamlet – Queer Theory
• Look at the
heterosexual
relationships – what
are they like?
• Look at Hamlet’s
relationship with
Horatio vs. his
relationship with
Ophelia