{"id":114,"date":"2021-10-25T20:05:39","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T01:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/?p=114"},"modified":"2021-10-28T12:03:18","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T17:03:18","slug":"the-hope-and-frustration-of-understanding-audiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/2021\/10\/25\/the-hope-and-frustration-of-understanding-audiences\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hope and Frustration of Understanding Audiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Row X blog by Hannah Grannemann<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sometimes I hear or read an interview with an author, and I immediately add their book to my too-long to-read list. Sometimes the interview is all I need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the ways in which I\u2019d like to bring value to you, the readers of this blog, is to occasionally write about academic works that I think have value for arts professionals<\/strong>, the primary audience for Row X. This is the first of those posts. Much of what I read is interesting but, in my view, not immediately or directly applicable to practitioners. I\u2019ll relegate those other pieces to my citations and write here about what\u2019s useful. Regardless of whether you add the pieces I write about to your too-long to-read list or not, I hope what I write is worthwhile on its own.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The field of audience research is broadly defined to say the least, encompassing qualitative and quantitative research, looking at the fields of arts, culture, tourism, heritage, and more. It incorporates social theory, media studies, and social sciences. Writing and research output can take myriad forms. I often feel overwhelmed by the audience research literature; the contradictory terms \u201cdown a rabbit hole\u201d and \u201cboil the ocean\u201d both cross my mind regularly. \u201cMaybe I can do a PhD on the side\u2026\u201d I think to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helen Freshwater<\/a>\u2019s 2009 book Theater & Audience<\/a>[1]<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>. Freshwater\u2019s book is incredibly helpful as I navigate the literature. It\u2019s written in a style I wish more academic books would adopt and to which I aspire. It\u2019s readable and full of novel connections between others\u2019 ideas and her own. I do<\/u> recommend Theatre & Audience<\/em> for your reading list.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To me, Freshwater has a tone of bemusement at how the various people she\u2019s discussing \u2013 theatre scholars, artists, critics \u2013 can treat the audience so shabbily. She doesn\u2019t put the audience on a pedestal, she just wonders how they can be so easily ignored, dismissed, or treated with disdain when the exchange that exists in theater requires their presence, attention and occasionally participation. \u201c\u2026[T]he relationship with the audience provides the theatre event with its rationale. This relationship is indispensable\u201d (p. 2). She understands<\/em> why they think this way, and explains their perspectives with compassion, saying at the beginning of the book that responses by theatre practitioners is a \u201ccomplex mix of hope, frustration, and disgust\u201d (p. 2), but wishes they would change their approach.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There were four issues about understanding audiences that I think are worth exploring over time on Row X<\/strong>. Freshwater is writing about theatre in particular, so I\u2019ll use that terminology below, but I think these are relevant for other art forms as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Theatre scholars don\u2019t quite know how to think about audiences.<\/strong> The existing dominant frameworks from literature (which interpret the text with a focus on the original author) and film studies (which examines audience response, but only in one direction, in a sender-receiver model) fall short. Neither has really figured out how to account for the interaction between performance and audience. She charts how the discussion of audience takes a turn to debating the merits of an active or a passive audience, which is a whole different path of inquiry. Freshwater observes repeatedly how scholars, critics and other gatekeepers resist actually finding out what people in audiences think. Some are interested: a \u201csmall minority\u201d (p. 33) of theatre scholars such as herself, and people responsible for ticket sales (marketers and producers), but we\u2019d all be better off if these other minds were put to the task as well, using actual information from audiences. She\u2019d like to see more application of cultural studies into audience research to add more range to the methodological options.

    More than just an academic argument, I see this playing out day-to-day when arts organizations feel tension between two different parts of their mission: to support the art and artists and serving audiences and community. It\u2019s easy to fall into the false binary of the artists wishes (the literary method) vs. \u201cwhat the audience wants\u201d (the film studies method). It takes discipline to recognize this framing as limiting, embrace a more dynamic and fluid approach, and really ask if the wishes of audience and artist are indeed mutually exclusive. A primary goal of Row X is to interrogate this space, trying to find the sweet spot where all the interests of audience, artist, and arts organization align.

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  2. The experience of watching theater is a collective AND individual experience. <\/strong>Audience responses are \u201crarely unified or stable\u201d, she writes (p. 3), and instead highly complex, even contradictory within the same person. Freshwater charts the evolution in audience research of recognizing the various lenses of identity through which a person views a performance, highlighting Susan Bennett\u2019s work, the growing influence of cultural studies, and that it\u2019s now \u201ccommon to scholars across the discipline is interest in one figure: the active audience member\u201d (p. 25).

    As I say in the     description of this blog<\/a>, there\u2019s not one audience, there are multiple audiences, always. When discussing, conceptualizing (then describing) audiences for programming or funding requests, holding these simultaneous ways of viewing and participating in the arts can be helpful to have a more well-rounded understanding of audience members\u2019 experiences.

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  3. Some theater artists, administrators, critics and others are hostile to and dismissive of audiences.<\/strong> \u201cWhy are audiences apparently not to be trusted?\u201d, she asks (p. 4). Freshwater quotes Plato, Rousseau, a British Joint Committee on Censorship and Licensing, W.B. Yeats and many more expressing their low opinion of audiences. Further, she describes artists who have written or created pieces for theater, but don\u2019t actually want certain groups of people to see it.

    I have definitely seen for myself that arts professionals and artists commonly feel that hope and frustration towards audiences, and occasionally the disgust she also names. Maybe I\u2019ve spent too much time learning psychological realism in my undergrad acting classes, but I think at its core it\u2019s a sadness at a lack of connection. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t more people buying tickets?\u201d is really \u201cWhy don\u2019t they like it? We want to share it. We think it\u2019s important and want others to see it\/know it\/experience it, but they don\u2019t seem to want it.\u201d Freshwater offers another answer that I recognize in myself and others:

    \u201c\u2026the continuing investment in the idea that theatre-going should be an improving and educational activity\u2026Ultimately it seems that the suspicion, contempt, and aggression directed towards audiences are a result of the belief that performance should somehow be \u2018good for you\u2019 and that \u2018you\u2019 might fail to recognise or appreciate that.\u201d

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  4. Active audience participation has always been and remains complicated and sometimes dangerous.<\/strong> In the final section, Freshwater returns to the issue of passive and active audiences. She names several performances\/experiences in the recent past with audience participation elements that were problematic for a range of real reasons such as assault of performers or verbal abuse of audiences. Freshwater analyzes a range of perspectives on more recent participatory or immersive productions, looking at whether shows like Blue Man Group or Punchdrunk’s Faust<\/em> <\/a>are manipulative, whether they trap the audience, or offer a level of interaction and engagement that are the opposite of the contempt shown to the audience in other productions.

    Published in 2009, Freshwater just touches on a question that\u2019s now front and center now: participation via technology, and what can be considered a theatrical performance. She describes her experience in a genre-fluid, gamified performance by     Blast Theory<\/a>. Did she see it or play it? I\u2019m not sure what the right word would be\u2026and that\u2019s the point. I hope she\u2019ll write more about audience experiences during COVID and what will happen with new forms of digital and hybrid forms of arts.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    These four areas of inquiry are inexhaustible and exactly the kinds of issues that I will be writing about on Row X in a range of styles of posts, including this style of writing about academic writing in audience research. Lest you think I will only write about books that are at least 10 years old (since I wrote about Chris Anderson\u2019s book The Long Tail in a previous post<\/a>), I have much more recent books in the queue for future posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you have a recommendation of a book, article, or other work I should write about, comment here on the blog <\/strong>or write to me at hagranne@uncg.edu<\/a>, or via social media: @hannahagnc<\/a> on Twitter or through LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Get new posts from Row X straight to your email inbox with the free ArtsJournal Daily or Weekly newsletter. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/em> Or, level up to the Premium Newsletter <\/a>or become a ArtsJournal Patreon Fan<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Correction (10\/28\/21): The original version of this post referenced Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More<\/em> in error. Dr. Freshwater wrote about their production of Faust. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    [1]<\/a> Freshwater, H. (2009). Theatre & audience<\/em>. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK\u202f; New York\u202f: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Hannah Grannemann writes about Helen Freshwater’s 2009 book Theatre & Audience, which offers relevant, thought provoking approaches to thinking about arts audiences. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44,"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":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[36,38,15,40,34,41,37,35],"class_list":{"0":"post-114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-audience-research-literature","8":"tag-blast-theory","9":"tag-blue-man-group","10":"tag-chris-anderson","11":"tag-faust","12":"tag-helen-freshwater","13":"tag-punchdrunk","14":"tag-the-long-tail","15":"tag-theatre-audience","16":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Red-Seats-Red-Curtain-scaled.jpg?fit=1920%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdmYVE-1Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rowx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}