Question

What I want you to do? Read the discussion topic below, create an original response in 100 words and respond to at least two other students. Discussion Topic: What is the role of the audience and how do they participate in the live theatre experience? Using what you have learned in Chapter 2 about The Audience, discuss what you think the role of the audience is. Use specific examples from your personal experience of attending a live theatre performance...how did it make you feel?

Answer 1

Live theatre is defined as the performance of a dramatic event by a group of actors in the presence of their counterpart ,the audience .

The role of the audience

The audience and the performers are the two essential elements of theatre: both are required for theatre to occur.

Audience make up and the theatre experience

-Its important to know who your audience is because the make up of the group will change from each different audiences

- are the audience members homogeneous or from a variety of backgrounds?

-some factors that contribute to the audience make up are:

-Gender

-Race

-socioeconomic background

-geography

- age

Separate roles of performance and spectators

-Audience involvement

-Aesthetic difference

-separation of the audience from the performance (you know its just a play, because you know its not real you are more accepting (You know a horror movie is pretend) )

-Observed Theatre

-Audience participates vicariously and empathy

-Participatory theatre

-Involves participation through direct action

-Creative dramatics, sociodrama, psychodrama, and drama therapy

Participation theatre is a means to another end- its aim is not public performance

#. Imagination or the audience

The audience roll in the creation of illusion

- Willing suspension of disbelief

-Believing in fantasy

-accepting drastic shifts in time and space

-rapid movements back and forth in time

-Anachronism