{"id":592,"date":"2015-07-27T09:30:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T07:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/?p=592"},"modified":"2015-07-28T11:18:31","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T09:18:31","slug":"in-defense-of-the-quieting-of-the-audience-and-so-called-passive-participation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/2015\/07\/in-defense-of-the-quieting-of-the-audience-and-so-called-passive-participation\/","title":{"rendered":"In defense of the quieting of the audience (and so-called passive participation)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Student of “Aesthetics & Business” Course in front of ChanShatz work at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art<\/p><\/div>\n

A couple weeks back I wrote\u00c2\u00a0a post about the latest research report from the Irvine Foundation<\/a>, in response to which several people posted smart comments. My post\u00c2\u00a0dealt to a large extent with Irvine’s general recommendation to\u00c2\u00a0arts nonprofits to respond to audience demand for more active\u00c2\u00a0participation. Around the same time my\u00c2\u00a0post was\u00c2\u00a0published, the performing arts world (the theater world, in particular) was\u00c2\u00a0buzzing a bit about two audience member cell phone\u00c2\u00a0infractions\u00c2\u00a0that made the news. First, at the July 2nd performance of Hand to God<\/em> in New York City,\u00c2\u00a0a young patron<\/a> rose from his seat, ambled onto the stage, and plugged his cell phone into a fake outlet on the set\u00c2\u00a0just before the performance was set to begin;\u00c2\u00a0then, a week later, at a performance of Shows for Days<\/em> at Lincoln Center\u00c2\u00a0Patti LuPone<\/a> snatched\u00c2\u00a0a cell phone out of the hands of a patron who wouldn’t stop texting.* Lupone says she may walk off the boards for good she’s so unnerved\u00c2\u00a0and annoyed\u00c2\u00a0by audiences who can no longer restrain themselves. The misguided patron\u00c2\u00a0says he was drunk and didn’t understand he was breaking any rules.<\/p>\n

Some have weighed in over the past few\u00c2\u00a0weeks to express sympathy and irritation at the constant threat of intrusion by phones at performances generally, while others have suggested\u00c2\u00a0that it’s time for performers and producers to loosen up and evolve their practices and expectations.\u00c2\u00a0Among those in the we-need-to-adapt\u00c2\u00a0camp is\u00c2\u00a0Scott Walters, who wrote a widely read\u00c2\u00a0post for The Clyde Fitch Report<\/a>—Patti LuPone and Cellphone-gazi<\/a>. Scott acknowledges\u00c2\u00a0that his own thinking on the issue has changed since he was an actor back-in-the-day; he now\u00c2\u00a0thinks, “If we really want theater to become a vibrant part of our culture again, [then]\u00c2\u00a0we need to get over this obsession about quiet.”<\/p>\n

Lynne Conner and The Quieting of the Audience<\/strong><\/p>\n

Walters defends his stance in part with the argument\u00c2\u00a0that the quiet audience is a relatively new phenomenon and that for centuries the audience at the theater was an active participant. The same argument appeared\u00c2\u00a0a week after Walter’s\u00c2\u00a0post in a\u00c2\u00a0San Francisco Classical Voice<\/em> article on what the arts can learn from sports marketing<\/a>. The article by Mark MacNamara\u00c2\u00a0opened:<\/p>\n

It’s important to keep remembering that the prim and passive persona of the performing arts audience these days is relatively new. Broadly speaking, the audience experience of old \u00e2\u20ac\u201d from say, the Theatre of Dionysus to the Th\u00c3\u00a9\u00c3\u00a2tre des Champs-Elys\u00c3\u00a9es \u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201d was in tone often much like right-wing talk radio: political, raucous, even violent and unhinged, but also profoundly communal, and thoroughly democratic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We can thank, in part, theater historian (and AJ Blogger<\/a>) Lynne Conner<\/a> for much of our renewed awareness that being quiet in the theater is a modern phenomenon. \u00c2\u00a0In numerous articles and books, Conner has reminded\u00c2\u00a0us\u00c2\u00a0that it was only in the 19th century that the audience\u00c2\u00a0lost its authority\u00c2\u00a0at the\u00c2\u00a0live theater; after centuries of talking back to, and talking about, the theater, patrons\u00c2\u00a0were put in the dark (thanks to\u00c2\u00a0the invention of the electric lightbulb), instructed\u00c2\u00a0to mind their manners, and intimidated into\u00c2\u00a0leaving interpretation to the experts. MacNamara writes:<\/p>\n

The gist of [Lynne Conner’s]\u00c2\u00a0argument is that modern audiences have lost their “sovereignty” and the meme of the day remains, “Sophisticated audiences do not interfere with great art, and unsophisticated people should confine themselves to other spaces.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While she has a relatively new book out that explores this arena, Audience Engagement and the Role of Arts Talk in the Digital Era<\/a>, I first encounted\u00c2\u00a0Conner’s\u00c2\u00a0thoughts on this topic in a chapter in the 2009\u00c2\u00a0Steven Tepper\/Bill Ivey compilation\u00c2\u00a0Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life<\/a>. Conner urged organizations\u00c2\u00a0to consider ways to democratize the arts\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0make them more engaging. I found her research and reflections\u00c2\u00a0inspiring. That same year\u00c2\u00a0I was giving\u00c2\u00a0a talk called “surviving the culture change” in which I was making arguments\u00c2\u00a0along the same lines.<\/p>\n

While I have been among those nudging arts organizations to think about how to make the live arts experience more relevant, meaningful, and dynamic, over the past few years\u00c2\u00a0I\u00c2\u00a0have begun to feel we\u00c2\u00a0are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water.\u00c2\u00a0Yes, some arts organizations need to lighten up and stop scolding the audience; yes, some arts programming is hopelessly out of touch with changing values and demographics in many cities; and yes, as a result of overemphasizing\u00c2\u00a0the lines between amateurs and professionals, some\u00c2\u00a0arts organizations have inadervertently\u00c2\u00a0discouraged a relationship to the\u00c2\u00a0arts among most people.<\/p>\n

However, it is important to bear in mind\u00c2\u00a0that the revocation of audience control in the\u00c2\u00a019th century\u00c2\u00a0emerged\u00c2\u00a0in response to concerns that certain audience members were becoming too\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>distracted\u00c2\u00a0and disruptive. That they were showing up at the theater more\u00c2\u00a0focused on socializing (flirting, drinking, eating, and chatting) than on the action on stage. Such behaviors began to cause consternation\u00c2\u00a0among performers\u00c2\u00a0and, notably, more sophisticated (read: wealthy and educated) patrons. While we now use the term passive in a somewhat derogatory manner to describe this newly restrained\u00c2\u00a0audience, this was not always the case. At the time, the taming of the audience\u00c2\u00a0was generally perceived\u00c2\u00a0to be beneficial.\u00c2\u00a0When the ragers and revelers left the building, those that remained began\u00c2\u00a0to pay\u00c2\u00a0more attention to what was happening on stage.<\/p>\n

So here we are again. The consumer is king and some audiences\u00c2\u00a0have, once again, become too distracted and disruptive. Some want to outlaw cell phones and create stricter guidelines, even if that drives certain\u00c2\u00a0patrons away (a move which\u00c2\u00a0seems to be history repeating itself). Others argue that there will be no audiences in the future if the live arts–across the board–don’t adapt to the changing times.\u00c2\u00a0Scott Walters suggests in his post that theater needs to step\u00c2\u00a0up its game rather than beef up its policing efforts:<\/p>\n

We can’t keep the 21st\u00c2\u00a0century outside the theater much longer. People come through the doors (if we’re lucky) and they are carrying cell phones. That’s a fact. Sometimes they forget to turn those cell phones off, and they ring. Get used to it. It happens everywhere, and it will continue happening. Accept it, and make it irrelevant. Earn attention, don’t expect it. Overcome the distraction of the age by being so compelling that people can’t look away, and can’t be distracted by someone texting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As much as I agree with Walters\u00c2\u00a0that the theater cannot command attention but must earn it, I worry about the loss of the\u00c2\u00a0arts experience that merits\u00c2\u00a0and rewards a quieting and a focus.\u00c2\u00a0For too many years we’ve shamed\u00c2\u00a0people into paying homage to art they don’t understand or like; now it seems we may be heading toward an overcorrection in which we shower\u00c2\u00a0people\u00c2\u00a0with stuff that will hook their attention in fifteen seconds and that they can immediately grasp.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we could aim for someplace in between?<\/p>\n

Active and passive participation are historically contingent concepts whose meanings have changed over time. Moreover, our sentiments about the virtues and vices of each have also changed.\u00c2\u00a0I’m not opposed to the development of\u00c2\u00a0more\u00c2\u00a0active forms of participation in the live arts; to the contrary, the rampant experimentation is exciting. I just hope\u00c2\u00a0we are not throwing in the towel on so-called passive arts experiences.<\/p>\n

What I learned teaching a course in aesthetic (and human) development<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite\u00c2\u00a0the need to change some\u00c2\u00a0practices, we still need environments that enable the focused attention that some<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0art works (whether performing or visual) require and merit. Unlike beauty in nature, the internal logic of a piece of art cannot always be grasped instantly. Aesthetic judgments in art can’t be made on objective measures or even, quite often, from immediate sensory perceptions. While one might have an initial sensory response, an\u00c2\u00a0aesthetic judgment comes from within and often requires a quieting, a focus.\u00c2\u00a0Conner and others problematize\u00c2\u00a0the quieting of the audience because it\u00c2\u00a0reduces the audience’s sovereignty. But quieting the audience could also be interpreted as creating the optimal conditions for someone to have an aesthetic encounter.<\/p>\n

The course on beauty and aesthetic development that I taught this past spring at the University of Wisconsin School of Business (to 22 undergraduate business majors) was, to a large extent, about doing just that.\u00c2\u00a0The students of the\u00c2\u00a0course discovered something about being present in the world in a different way when they turned off their phones, focused their attention on a sunset, stopped multitasking and really listened to a symphony from beginning to end, sat in the balcony of\u00c2\u00a0the Overture Center and watched Hubbard Street Dance, or stood silently in front of an artwork for 30 minutes (an activity captured in\u00c2\u00a0photo at the top of this post).<\/p>\n

The class was an experiment and many of the choices I made this first time around were developed out of personal experience (thinking about how my own tastes and\u00c2\u00a0capacity to make meaning from\u00c2\u00a0arts experiences evolved over time) and from reading research on the nature of the aesthetic experience. One seminal book that guided my thinking was The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter<\/em> by\u00c2\u00a0Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Rick Emry Robinson. Csikszentmihalyi equates the aesthetic experience to that of flow<\/em>. He arrived at this conclusion as a result of\u00c2\u00a0a qualitative and quantitative study of\u00c2\u00a0experts in the art world (who, unsurprisingly, have aesthetic experiences more frequently than most of us). Flow is an experience in which one is deeply absorbed, one loses a sense of time, and one feels joy and mastery while performing an activity\u00c2\u00a0(whether writing a section of a novel,operating on someone, having a conversation, playing a video game, or experiencing a great artwork). In other words, the meaningful aesthetic encounter is not a passive one.<\/p>\n

Importantly, it is difficult to achieve flow if one is stretched too far beyond one’s natural capabilities; arguably, many audiences come to arts events without the requisite knowledge or previous experience to feel mastery.<\/p>\n

In planning the course I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the optimal order of experiences; and I made adjustments over the course of the term in response to subtle forms of feedback from the students. At each step, I wanted them to feel challenged but never\u00c2\u00a0incompetent. Moreover, I refrained from giving assessments for several weeks. I wanted the\u00c2\u00a0students to\u00c2\u00a0focus on the experience\u00c2\u00a0itself; and I wanted them\u00c2\u00a0to cultivate the\u00c2\u00a0ability\u00c2\u00a0to make and articulate (internal)\u00c2\u00a0aesthetic\u00c2\u00a0judgments. I also frequently encouraged them to generate a creative response to each experience (make a drawing, write a haiku, etc.) If I teach the class again I will continue to experiment with its methods. I’ve become\u00c2\u00a0compelled by this notion\u00c2\u00a0of finding better ways to help people cultivate an aesthetic sensibility. My aim is not for them to become\u00c2\u00a0patrons of the arts, per se (although that could be a beneficial outcome, as well); I simply believe that there is great value in this way of experiencing\u00c2\u00a0and approaching life.<\/p>\n

If\u00c2\u00a0we want people to feel engaged\u00c2\u00a0(rather than bored)\u00c2\u00a0at orchestral concerts, museums, dance performances,\u00c2\u00a0and theater pieces there are many approaches we can try. We can try letting them keep their phones on and Tweet from the back row. We\u00c2\u00a0can try producing more spectacular works and encouraging people to jump out of their seats and shout back at the stage when they feel moved to do so. We can try taking performances and exhibitions\u00c2\u00a0to nontraditional settings and letting people eat, drink, and socialize as they experience the\u00c2\u00a0arts event. And we can try inviting\u00c2\u00a0the people<\/em> to create the work and bring it to life with us. Many organizations are trying these very methods–and many others–with great success.\u00c2\u00a0Alongside these experiments in active participation strategies, however, I hope some arts organizations will also (continue to?) experiment with ways to make the so-called “passive” artistic experience\u00c2\u00a0more meaningful and rewarding, especially for newcomers. Something wonderful can also come from sitting quietly, doing nothing, and focusing one’s attention on the work.<\/p>\n

* An earlier version of this post stated that LuPone stopped the performance to take the cell phone from the patron but this has been corrected to reflect that she took the phone during a stage exit during which her character was blocked to shake hands with audience members.<\/p>\n

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A couple weeks back I wrote\u00c2\u00a0a post about the latest research report from the Irvine Foundation, in response to which several people posted smart comments. My post\u00c2\u00a0dealt to a large extent with Irvine’s general recommendation to\u00c2\u00a0arts nonprofits to respond to audience demand for more active\u00c2\u00a0participation. Around the same time my\u00c2\u00a0post was\u00c2\u00a0published, the performing arts world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-engagement","8":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/IMG_0237.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p15Pqw-9y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}