FEATURE: Chance Encounters (Theater Magazine 40.3)

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2016

This article investigates two theatre works in order to reflect upon the evolving meaning of spectatorship when taken out of the traditional venues, as well as upon the elusive experience of attending site-specific work. In Corcadorca's production of Enda Walsh's How These Desperate Men Talk at the Kinsale Arts Festival (2014) and ANU's Vardo (2014) at the Dublin Theatre Festival, the notion of a passive spectator is under attack. The fact that both companies are devoted to developing innovative 'off-site' performances (i.e. outside theatre venues) and creating new exchanges with audiences offers a common ground for a practice which proves most heterogeneous and destabilising for spectators and researchers alike. The shows play with the wide range of possibilities to be accessed via a tentatively termed 'site-specificity' to focus on the engagement with a community or a one-on-one audience and to modify narrative expectations. In order to question what tends to be involved in this relationship between work, site and spectator(s), the contexts and nature of the constructed journeys are explored in the first place. It is suggested that the different kinds of exchange with the site (from neutral off-site to site-exclusive performances) impact on the form of reception and therefore the role, status and limits of the spectators. Finally, approaching the two plays via the spectator allows for a reading of the theatre experience that opens up on aesthetic and political considerations.

2013

Questions around what audiences do are becoming ever more complex as innovative modes of participation are developed in contemporary immersive, interactive and intermedial theatre. Drawing on examples from Uninvited Guests, Void Projects, Punchdrunk, Blast Theory and other contemporary theatre practitioners , this article suggests that new models are needed in order to reason about the experience of the contemporary theatre audience. It proposes that the philosophical framework of Possible Worlds Theory, as used by digital theorists to elucidate the reader's experience of hypertext fiction, can also provide tools and a language which recognise and validate the complexities of spectatorial practices in participatory theatre. The article uses digital theory and several applications of Possible Worlds Theory to reveal some implications of active spectating as it explores what it means to manoeuvre between successive states of immersion and interaction through an aesthetic process.

2019

This report from the field describes some of the author’s methods of audience engagement as a means of social engagement, discussing the implications for practice. The report invites dialogue with the reader about the usefulness of audience engagement and ways it can be manifested before, during and after performance. Theatre is a vibrant and valuable tool for sparking dialogue and inspiring action around challenging social topics. Audiences who are engaged in the process of the performance beyond the standard role of passive spectator are more likely to be motivated to deliverable endeavors post performance. This report from the field offers four brief case studies as examples of audience engagement and includes pragmatic techniques for using theatre as a vehicle for personal and social change through audience engagement. It explores how artists can galvanize and empower audiences by creating experiential communities pre, during, and post-show. Drawing upon examples from high-quali...

2020

I had the pleasure to present this paper at the II Conferencia científica internacional "Teatralidad - Antiteatralidad: estudios transdisciplinares y escenológicos del teatro contemporáneo" - 2nd International Scientific Conference "Theatricality - Antitheatricality: Transdisciplinary and Scenological Studies on Contemporary Theater" - The body of the spectator (16-18 December 2020). Organised by: Instytut Neofilologii / Universidad de Bielsko-Biała - University of Bielsko-Biała (POLONIA) & Instituto de Artes del Espectáculo “Dr. Raúl H. Castagnino”. ABSTRACT: The agency of the audience members develops into what I call the audience-audience relationship, which I discuss in this paper. This refers to the way in which audience members influence each other within the time-space framework of a performance, resulting in actions that affect the performer, and thus, shape and direct the development of the work. The artist's body becomes the receiver/spectator while the audience's body, as a collective body made of individual bodies, performs. I explore how the spectators, once they take agency in the performance, may direct its process and overpower the artist by acting independently from them and the initial format of the work. The presence-authority of the artist in relation to the work becomes secondary or is overshadowed. The audience-audience relationship highlights the relationality and mutuality intrinsic in the performance ecosystem, as well as the agency of the inanimate elements of space, time, and documentation in acting upon bodies, and vice versa.

2021

Written soon before and in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when theatre ground to a halt and spectatorship was suspended, this book takes stock of spectatorship as theatre's living archive and affirms its value in the midst of the present crisis. Drawing from a manifold affective archive of performances and installations (by Marina Abramović, Ron Athey, Forced Entertainment, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Blast Theory, LIGNA, Doris Salcedo, Graeme Miller, Lenz Rifrazioni, Cristina Rizzo, etc.), and expanding on the work of many theorists and scholars, such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou, Nicholas Ridout and Alan Read, among others, the book focusses on the spectator as the subject, rather than the object, of investigation. This is the right time to remember their secret power and theorise their collective time in the theatre. This book is an archive of their adventure and a manifesto rooted in their potentiality. It boldly posits the spectator as the inaugurator of theatre, the surplus that survives it. The book will be of great interest to spectators all and sundry, to scholars and students of theatre and performance studies, of spectatorship and politics.

A review of the collection "The Audience Experience," edited by Jennifer Radbourne, Hilary Glow, and Katya Johanson; published in Theatre Topics 24.1 (2014).

One of the theatre and performance conventions that has been challenged by the application of technology is that of space. Theatrical space has been “expanded” through the application of technology and its artefacts. However, it is not really clear what is meant by “expansion”, as it means different things according to different authors and these divergent meanings often lead to misunderstandings. In this article, I will demonstrate the need for a more nuanced understanding of what the expansion of theatrical space means and its impact on the concept of spectatorship. The analysis will be based on three distinct forms of digital performance where spatial expansion has been an issue; these are three categories that also mark the heterogeneity and dynamism of the convergence of performance and technology: multimedia performance, telematic performance and pervasive performance. Through an analysis of specific cases across the categories, I aim to show how the expansion of space implies a more participatory stance in the role of the spectator.

Critical Stages, 2012

This article takes Richard Maxwell's and Philippe Quesne's performances as an example to draw a line through the concept of "participation" in the contemporary theatre and performance field. A reflection on the active role of the spectator.