While many are complaining that today’s audiences don’t behave as they used to — they won’t sit still for long periods, they’re resistant to the sacred spaces of quiet museums and concert halls — Lynne’s study of history suggests quite another thing. In fact, she says, the quiet, receiving audience is a fairly recent blip in history. Says she:<\/p>\n
\nUp through the end of the nineteenth century, western audiences of all economic classes and from a wide variety of places were expected to be active participants before, during and after an arts event. Few conceived of the arts event as existing independently of its audience — not the artists nor the producers nor the audiences themselves. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence in the historical record to suggest that it was quite the opposite; the audience’s presence was understood to be fundamental to the very definition of the arts event itself.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
From ancient Athens to nineteenth-century America, audiences were expected to be highly interactive in defining the meaning and value of a cultural experience. In Athens, the entire citizenry (well, the men anyway) would take part in multi-day competitions to select the best tragedy of the year. In early theaters, audience members could move their seats around the chamber, talk amongst themselves, and interact with the actors or musicians on stage. In early American museums, citizens from all economic strata would wander ecclectic collections with picnic baskets to spend the day.<\/p>\n
According to Conner, the passive, respectful, and quiet audience was not a historical ideal, but a construction of late nineteenth-century social and technology trends. Electric lighting shifted the audience into the dark for the first time in theater spaces, and emphasized the action on-stage. And America’s social elite were seeking to define themselves against the lower classes by emphasizing the pure and perfect aspects of “high” art. Sophisticated audiences don’t interrupt the artist’s work with talk or movement or expressed opinion. They receive it as instruction, as gospel even.<\/p>\n
So, how is this recent trend in behavior shifting back again to a historical norm? Stay tuned this week for more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just came out of a glorious weekend of thoughtful conversation among my program alumni, students, and guests, on the subject of the “active audience.” Our two keynote provocateurs, Lynne Conner and Alan Brown, pushed us all to rethink how we think about audience experiences. And the many students and arts practitioners in the room […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}