Freeing Your Inner Audience: A New Paradigm for the Theatre

Why do we go to the theatre?  Is it simply to judge what we see?  Or is there a truer, more joyful, role for the audience?  How can we return to our natural state of engagement?

Artistic Director Byam Stevens has been speaking on this topic for some time now.  His novel approach to the audience experience has drawn rave reviews from our London Tour participants.  According to one patron: “It transformed my theatre-going experience! I now understand and appreciate so much more.”

Here are some of his thoughts on the role of the audience in the theatre:

The vast majority of theatre-goers adopt a  “critical” paradigm to shape their theatrical experience. That is, they are deeply influenced by the criticism they’ve read over the years as they sit and watch a play. This methodology has pronounced drawbacks.

First, the methodology is flawed in conception. Papers don’t print criticism; they print reviews, and print reviewers are consumer advocates operating under another name. Reviewers are not charged with putting the play in a larger literary and theatrical context, or with considering the play’s thematic material in a deliberate and thoughtful fashion – they’re charged with the out-putting of 500 peppy words that will let readers know whether or not they can safely afford to miss this particular production. Why imitate the reviewer’s experience, which is already a pale imitation of the critic’s?

Second, the “critical” paradigm puts a premium on judgment and de-emphasizes engagement. It encourages the theatre-goer to be a passive viewer and not a participant – perhaps a logical outgrowth of the “fourth wall” concept which separates the actors’ reality from the audience’s.  Yet every actor will tell you they are not only fully aware that the audience is there; they can feel the different kinds of vibes coming across the footlights. The actors and the audience are partners in an undertaking, not adversaries. We as audience are complicit. Wouldn’t the thoughtful theatre-goer prefer to be a colleague than a voyeur?

The well-meaning theatre-goer is not at fault here. This premium on judgment at the expense of engagement is what our media is promulgating – a culture of dissatisfaction, of passive viewers swept up in a rush to verdict.  As if  “I Don’t Like It” – the most reductive, least thought-provoking idea that can be extracted from an experience – matters to anyone but you.

Experiencing theatre this way is like evaluating the paintings in a museum on the basis of whether or not you’d like to hang them over your couch. I’ll let you in on a secret – artists aren’t there to affirm your prejudices, but to create the space in which you can examine them. What artists care about is engaging you in an dialogue of ideas.

When did being critical come to be equated with being negative? As if the less one likes things the more discerning one becomes. By this measure the greatest connoisseur is the one who likes nothing.  But we know in our hearts this isn’t true. What makes a connoisseur is not the fact that one’s standards are so high that nothing satisfies, or that one agrees with other connoisseurs about what they like.  No, it’s the active appreciation of  the different philosophies, the craft, the expertise that goes into making the product.

Why not adopt a new paradigm? Why not approach the theatrical experience the way artists do – eschewing the soul deadening thumbs up/thumbs down shortcut for the rewards of an honest engagement.

I will share this new methodology, which participants on our London Tours have called “revolutionary” and “liberating,” with CTC audiences at the TalkBacks following every performance this summer.  Come engage with us, and continue the conversation.

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