The audience in a theatre production has numerous responsibilities. The audience is central to the action in a production, and production circumstances may change the audience's interpretation and critique of the action they are viewing.

1. Who Decides What is Good Performance?:
Learning Objectives
• Explain how the audience serves as a community that shares in and
influences the experience of attending a theatrical performance.
• Explain how the behaviors and expectations of audiences have changed
throughout history.
• Define the roles and understand the importance of the "filters" between
the cast and crew of a play and the audience: critics, theorists, dramaturgs,
producers or financial investors, marketing teams, and agents.
• Understand what makes theatre both an art and a business.

2. Who Decides What is Good Performance?
Key Concepts
• Although judging art can be subjective, standards by which art can be judged
have been developed over time and within any given culture.
• There can be as many interpretations of a theatrical production as there are
audience members; however, some interpretations may be more valid than
others.
• Audience conventions and expectations have shifted over time.
• In today's world, one of the main factors that sets live performance apart from
mediatized is the community that exists not only among audience members, but
also between actor and audience.

3. Who Decides What is Good Performance?
Key Concepts
• A good theatre review is a balance of four types of information—description, analysis,
interpretation, and judgment—with an engaging lede at the start.
• Theories help to explain and explore various aspects of theatre.
• The dramaturg may serve several crucial roles in a theatre, but in general, functions as the
“questioning spirit” or “conscience” of the production.
• Since the Renaissance, theatre has often operated as a business, with various positions
created to help ensure that theater artists can make a living at their craft, such as the
producer, marketing team, and agent.
• Since the beginning of theatre, those in power have attempted to control it.

4. Who Decides What is Good Performance?
• The Audience: an integral part of the process of performance
because…
– Theatre happens in the spectator’s mind
– Thus a production may have as MANY interpretations as there are
audience members
• A production team tries to shape an audience’s response to a
play through…
• Design, direction, acting choices

5. Audience as Community
• Community is affected by a number of factors…
– Size
– Arrangement (in-the-round vs. ¾ thrust vs. proscenium)
– Makeup (social, economical, etc.)

6. Audiences for the Rocky Horror Picture Show are extremely homogenous

8. The Audience and the Willing Suspension of
Disbelief
• A shared understanding that the actions the audience is
collectively witnessing are not real; that they exist within a
fictive framework (ie, the theatre)
• Further, that the audience agrees to accept the actions as
though they were real and will react appropriately given the
circumstances of the play

9. Professional wrestling fans are some of the greatest and most intense in the world.

10. Audience Response
• Audience members have a responsibility to participate in the
performance through display of emotion…
– Clapping
– Laughing
– Crying
– Gasping
– The Standing ovation
Standing Ovations: Be part of the solution, not the problem

11. Audience Response:
Theatre Riots
• Sometimes audience members get really, really angry…
– Old Price Riots, 1809
• Caused by rising ticket prices at Covent Garden in London

12. Audience Response:
Theatre Riots
• Astor Place Riot, 1849, New York City
– A community dispute over who has the better Shakespearean actor,
American Edwin Forrest, or Englishman William Charles Macready

13. Audience Response:
Theatre Riots
• Ubu Roi premier, 1896, Paris
– Caused when the first word of dialogue is uttered – “merde!” (“shit!”)
– People rioted in the audience
– Demanded Alfred Jarry’s head

14. Audience Response:
Theatre Riots
• The Playboy Riots, Playboy of the Western World, January 1907
– John Millington Synge
– Caused by Irish nationalists who believed the play promoted harmful
behavior…specifically, the mention of a woman’s slip as part of the
onstage action

15. Audience Response:
Expectations Today
• Since the arrival of electric lighting, theatre audiences are
much less communally engaged today
– Sit quietly
– Watch/listen attentively
– Communicate response only at appropriate moments
– Turn off your pager* and cell phone…
*not that anyone still has a pager...

20. Audience in History:
A Theatre for the People
• 19th century Europe saw the Industrial Revolution create new
wealth for the working middle class
• These members of the middle class began to attend theatre
much more frequently
• As the audience changed, so did the style of performance,
away from “high art” to melodrama, variety shows, etc.

21. Audience in History:
The Democratic Stage in Design

22. Audience in History:
Non-Western Theatre
• In many non-western theatre performances, audience
interaction is not only expected, but culturally required.

23. Audience Etiquette:
Do’s and Don’t’s
• Do be an informed, respectful audience member.
• Do not be late.
• Do not bring food and drink into the theatre unless otherwise
notified.
• Do turn off your cell phone or other electronic device (not
merely silence it).
• Do not text or instant message.

24. Audience Etiquette:
Do’s and Don’t’s
• Do not take video or still pictures of the performance.
• Do not talk during the performance.
• Do not put your feet on the backs of seats.
• Do not leave the theatre while a performance is in progress
unless it is an emergency.
• Do laugh, cry, gasp, or applaud as appropriate.

25. Who Decides What is Good Performance?:
Theatre Criticism
• What is criticism?
– View
– Analyze
– Interpret
– Contextualize
– Judge
Statler: You know, that’s not half bad.
Waldorf: Nope, it’s all bad!

26. Who Decides What is Good Performance?:
Theatre Criticism
• Audience members
– Facebook, blogs – primarily electronic media, written for popular consumption
– Superficial criticism – was the play good/bad?
• Professional critics
– Newspapers, magazines – combination print and electronic, written for popular
consumption and knowledgeable audience
– Deeper criticism – writes about various elements and how they fit together
• Scholarly critics
– Journals, websites – combination print and electronic, written for knowledgeable
audience
– Deepest criticism – offers historical and contextualize evidence, argues for value
of the play