Participation

At the beginning of the rehearsal yesterday we touched upon the nature of participation and that curious thing called 'audience participation'. It got us thinking about how an audience participates in a performance experience and how that is expressed physically, vocally, emotionally, intellectually:

• by buying a ticket (a financial transaction)
• by attending and being present
  
• by watching, listening and thus engaging
  
• by identifying with what might be going on
• by shouting out (boos and cheers)
  
• by singing
  
• by clapping (during songs)
• by being invited up onto the stage
• by laughing
• by applauding
• by influencing the outcome maybe (Alan Ayckbourn)
• by talking about if afterwards
• by writing a review or blogging (!)

The interesting thing about Christmas shows is that there is an expectation that the participation will involve the audience being vocally and physically engaged during the performance which will drive the action: and this expectation needs to be fulfilled.

But the most fundamental element of participation is that it has already begun once the ticket has been purchased: simply by wanting to attend and then actually being present means that there is participation.

So how do you naturally integrate other elements of participation without it feeling artistically crude and obviously conventional? This, no doubt, has to happen, initially, at the writing stage and then be developed, with an incredible amount of imaginative input, in the rehearsal room.

An audience certainly needs clear signals so that they can fulfill their own expectation of what is wanted of them. This is something that we worked on today when rehearsing the teaching of the "Don't Be Scared' Beast's song.

Also: each member of the audience - and thus each audience - will participate in a slightly different way which will require performers to participate and respond slightly differently.

And we haven't even mentioned how integral the performers / the actors / the musicians / and dancers are in this participation and the nature of their own participation...