Audience Participation in Theatre

Aesthetics of the Invitation

G. White

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137010735
• eBook ISBN: 9781137010742
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This book asks that we consider the practices that facilitate audience participation on equal terms with other elements of the theatre maker's art; it offers a theoretical basis for this new approach, illustrated by examples from diverse participatory performances.

1

Process and Procedure

In this chapter I will introduce three questions that relate the issue of the participant’s agency to the practicalities of devising, facilitating and taking part in an audience participatory performance. These three questions present areas of uncertainty in the understanding of interactive artworks when we consider them alongside more conventional works. They are also concerned with the nature of the artwork, especially in relation to the contribution of the audience participant. The questions are:

• Who ‘authors’ audience participation and how?

• Who is in control when participation is happening?

• Where does the ‘art’ happen – in the event itself, or in the preparation for the event?

To explore these questions I will propose and articulate some terms, most importantly ‘procedural authorship’, ‘invitation’ and ‘horizon of participation’. Each is either borrowed from or develops from earlier work in aesthetics, sociology or phenomenology; they provide the basis of the discussion for the rest of the book.

Like most performances, those that include audience participation usually involve a lot of preparation. Like most performances they cannot be considered to be fully realised until there is an audience present to watch, listen and appreciate, and to interact. But the quantity and quality of the interaction that is needed to realise audience participation is different to that which is needed to complete a more conventional performance. Though any performance maker and regular performance watcher knows how much performances can change from one occasion to the next, we are in the habit of considering each performance of the same production to be an iteration of the same work. Does this make sense when audience participation is a significant element of the performance? The answer may be yes, but if so it is yes in a quite different way.

The contribution of the participant is the important difference. It is important to a conception of a work as interactive, and it is important, though to varying degrees, to practitioners who ask for interaction. An interactive work is an event made through the collaboration of artists and participating audience members, and the way this comes to happen is something we will need to ask questions about. If, as I have suggested in the introduction, interactive work is characterised by the recognition of the audience participant as a subject through their actions in the performance, the way those actions come to happen is fundamental. We cannot understand interactive performance without considering the provenance of these actions and interactions: how invitations to participate are made, and how people are able to respond to these invitations.

Once again, most performance involves a great deal of preparation, but does not come into being properly, as a work of art, until it is performed for an audience; performance is an event. But the interactive work is prepared so that it has gaps to be filled with the actions of participating audience members (as well as, of course, gaps for the coded participations of applause, laughter and other ‘normal’ audience responses) and gaps that require the thought and felt response of the audience to make sense out of its various material.¹ So a significant part of the work of an interactive work consists of creating the structure within which these particular gaps appear, and the work of the interactive performer consists of repeating this structure and allowing the participants to fill the gaps in different ways in each fresh iteration of the work. So does the audience participatory event consist of the structure or the action that happens in the gaps that it creates? The answer must be that it is both; to understand this dual nature of the work we need good terms for it.

In drama education the emphasis is on drama as a process as much as a product, and it is from this idea that much Theatre in Education (TIE) has evolved,² building a body of process-oriented practices with audience participation at its heart. This chapter takes a theorisation of TIE practice as a starting point: the terms appropriate for this kind of process-based practice can, with some modification, provide a basis for others not normally associated with it. A process involves uncertainty, spontaneity, responsiveness and the chance for participants to express themselves and make choices; these characteristics are also common in audience participatory performance outside educational settings. But every drama educator knows the value of preparation, and carefully constructs the activities from which such processes arise. This preparation and the presentation of prepared activities, in educational settings and elsewhere, are the procedures that create process.

I have borrowed the word procedure from Jan Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck in which she discusses the way that participation is manipulated by computer game designers to create a system with which players to interact, and designing the procedures that allow and respond to their activities. She insists this is a creative activity comparable with that of poets, authors and playwrights: it is very similar to the work of the creators of interactive drama, and Murray’s definition is one that will transfer easily:

Procedural authorship means writing the rules by which the texts appear as well as writing the text themselves. It means writing the rules for the interactor’s involvement, that is, the conditions under which things will happen in response to the participant’s actions. It means establishing the properties of the objects and potential objects in the virtual world and the formulas for how they will relate to one another. The procedural author creates not just a set of scenes but a world of narrative possibilities. (Murray 1999: 152)

Murray’s procedural author is involved in telling stories, as narrative is important to these digital entertainments as it leads us to immerse ourselves in a game, but narrative is no more essential to this concept of authorship than it is to authorship of other kinds. What is important is the suggestion of both the authority of the practitioner who makes such a framework, and the distinctive character of the procedures they use. It also implies that authorship here is quite different from authorship elsewhere. The creators of interactive performances are procedural authors, though narrative is not always as important to their work as it is to most game designers. In this chapter I will discuss how this concept is helpful, as well as some of its limitations.

Does this mean that the procedural author is only in control up to the moment where the procedure creates a gap, at which point an audience participant steps in and takes control of the event? Clearly not. The exchanges that can happen between performer and participant are extremely complex, so that control – and authorship – is shared, and passed back and forth between them. The most nuanced analysis of audience-participatory performance will address this sharing of the control of the performed action, and will show how the initiative, the power to make choices, and the freedom to express – in other words the agency within the event – is shared by participants and those who facilitate their action. The terminology and approach proposed in this chapter is intended to allow this kind of nuanced analysis.

Antony Jackson and frame analysis

To begin to develop a theory in response to these questions, it is helpful to look at an existing set of terms that relate to a specific mode of practice, to see how they can be generalised and developed to apply in other areas. Anthony Jackson (1997: 48–60), in a discussion of interactive strategies in TIE, introduces an interpretation of Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1986). He describes a series of frames used to facilitate different kinds of participation, first a ‘Pre-Theatrical Frame’ in which children are prepared for the theatrical experience, and an ‘Outer Theatrical Frame’ in which a theatrical space is established. In these two frames the audience does not yet imaginatively take on another a new role, but they recognise the distinction between theatrical space and normal space, and the expectations placed on their behaviour (that they will watch) and that of the performers (that they will perform). He goes on to name a number of ‘Inner Frames’ that can operate within this outer theatrical frame, and between which TIE programmes move. In the ‘Narrative Frame’ a story is told or introduced, in the ‘Presentational Frame’ the actors present the story. Though the audience watching in these frames remain just watchers and listeners, they may be ‘contextualised’, given a fictional role related to the situation they are watching, perhaps one that gives them something to watch out for. The ‘Investigative Frame’ allows the audience to join the action, usually with a specific task, and where the progress of the story is often suspended. The ‘Involvement Frame’ is where the audience and performers occupy the same space, physically and imaginatively, and the audience have become participants with a significant influence over the course of the action. Jackson’s analysis of M6 Theatre’s Grounded³ shows something of how these frames might be found in typical TIE of the time:

The play opens with a brief scene between mother and daughter at the clinic, awaiting the results of Joanne’s pregnancy test. Unambiguously, we watch through a presentational frame. Then, before the scene is resolved, the mother turns to the audience and, in direct address, she recounts the events of that day and all that has led up to the current crisis, thus establishing a narrative frame, in present time. […] The workshop begins as soon as the play ends. Still within the outer theatre frame (the students are not yet returning to the classroom), the dominant frame is now the investigative – established by the facilitator (in this case one of the actors who played a less pivotal character and can thus be more ‘neutral’). It is clearly signalled to the students now that they have a distinct role to play – not merely to clarify but to engage with and test the action and the characters (who stay in role throughout). (Jackson 1997: 56–59)

The benefit of Jackson’s approach is that he suggests a way of describing procedural authorship: as the manipulation of frames of interaction. As I will go on to demonstrate, Goffman’s Frame Analysis offers a structure for thinking about the procedure of participatory work and the processes that arise from it, and for how performers and participants interact with each other as the event evolves. Jackson has named some categories of frames, but not described them in great detail, nor elaborated a set of terms for this more detailed description, but the theory he draws on offers such a set of terms. Jackson’s frames, as he describes them, are appropriate to the work that is common in TIE, but they will not serve to describe all kinds of audience participation. In particular, there will be a greater variety of ‘inner frames’ available in addition to the ones he describes, and also a greater number of variations on the ones he describes.

In De La Guarda’s Villa Villa,⁴ for example, there were several kinds of involvement frame in the middle section of the show, the ‘Fiesta China’. Here the performers improvised dances with the audience, flirting with them, kissing them, carrying them off to other parts of the building. In this section the content of the performance depends upon the actions of the spectators who interact with the performers – and it is certainly an inner frame. But it differs markedly from another episode a few moments later in the show where one spectator is chosen to be hoisted into the air above the audience, where most of the action up to this point has taken place. This is also an inner frame, but it is quite different: the participant is much more the focus of everyone’s attention, but is much less in control of what happens, so this is not consistent with what Jackson calls integral participation. His essay points the way but does not tell us how to differentiate between different modes like these. He does not develop a way of describing in detail how facilitators begin and end participation, nor how they guide interaction when it is under way, but such an elaboration can begin with the terminology he borrows from Goffman’s Frame Analysis. This chapter develops these ideas and renders them adaptable to a wider variety of circumstances and practices, setting out a scheme for the discussion of audience participation that focuses on how it is ‘marked off’ from the usual interactions of theatre.

Goffman’s Frame Analysis

Frame Analysis develops a vocabulary to describe how we organise our perceptions of the multitude of different situations we observe and find ourselves in. The most basic distinction made is between two different types of ‘primary frameworks’: the natural and the social. In the natural order we understand events to be determined beyond social control, and not guided by human agency; and in the social order we perceive the choices and efforts of other social beings like ourselves. Thus, at the most basic level, we look at our experiences in different ways, bringing to them different assumptions about their meaning: we place them into frames that enable our understanding. As well as structuring our perceptions, frames allow us to manage the different episodes of life, and our behaviour in social life in particular. We clearly use different kinds of behaviour in different situations, and in social life the movements between the different kinds of behaviour are subtle and complex; the problem is how to describe and account for these changes in behaviour. Goffman’s idea is that we do this through ‘organisational premises’ (1986: 247) that make the situation real to us as well as manageable: we have ways of understanding what kind of activity is going on, and what kind of activity would be appropriate and beneficial for ourselves. When Goffman uses frame to describe our functional understanding of interactions in everyday life he indicates a network of shared assumptions about what an interaction means for its participants, and what is appropriate behaviour at these interactions. A key phrase for Goffman is ‘the definition of the situation’(1986: 1), the agreement between the people involved in an interaction about what it is they are engaged in, and what can or should happen.

Gavin Bolton gives an interpretation of Frame Analysis in an educational context, focusing on how it is necessary to ‘build belief’ in the social context and our role in it (1992: 2). He gives the example of a class, which begins like any other class with the teacher (Bolton himself) following his own pattern of teacherly behaviour to assert himself as the focus and leader of the group, and the students signal their understanding and acceptance of this by following their own student-like routine. Once this is achieved they can all go about the business of learning and teaching, and become less concerned with demonstrating their roles. In Bolton’s example the class was interrupted when one of the students was taken ill, and another social order had to be hurriedly put in place while this situation was dealt with; in order to begin the class again he and the students had once again to go through a period of demonstrating the ascendancy of the ‘classroom’ situation. Bolton sees everyday life as an oscillation between demonstrating the kind of social relationship that is appropriate and submitting to that relationship and the process that ensues from it. Though Bolton uses this term ‘building belief’, neither he nor Goffman intend that we disbelieve one definition of the situation in order to move on to another, nor that we need to hold conflicting beliefs in abeyance in order to move from one frame to another, merely that it is necessary to agree on the current definition:

Together the participants contribute to a single over-all definition of the situation which involves not so much a real agreement as to what exists but rather a real agreement as to whose claims concerning what issues will be temporarily honoured. (Goffman 1969: 21)

Clearly there is an issue of trust involved in this building of belief, a need to establish that a ‘proper’ or ‘correct’ frame is being employed, and in the idea of ‘whose claims’ are honoured; issues around trust will inform the discussion of risk in participation in the following chapter. Goffman indicates, in this phrasing, that frame is always to some extent a matter of power, that those who are able to control the definition of a situation are able to control what is talked about and how it is talked about, what is done or not done, what is decided, what action taken. How control of this kind happens is the concern of the second half of this chapter.

In drama work in the classroom, the rehearsal or in a workshop, we can observe this oscillation between the setting up and settling into the drama, and the work when it is properly under way and the actors are committed to it. Relationships are set up where participants know what role they are to play, and what others are to play, how they are to play them, and when they are to stop, but once they are involved in this ‘playing’ it is no longer necessary to think about these parameters. Drama work is clearly a frame that can contain behaviours of different kinds – ‘acting’ or ‘not acting’ for example⁵ – and where people move easily from one kind of behaviour to another with some ease. The situation in the theatre – as opposed to the classroom, the rehearsal room or the workshop – is different, at least at first glance. As Goffman observes, ‘the central understanding’ of the theatre is ‘that the audience has neither the right nor the obligation to participate directly in the dramatic action occurring on the stage’ (1986: 125). When some members of the gathering at a theatre performance appear to change frames, to move into another definition of the situation where they follow, for example, scripted behaviour, others appear to remain outside the frame, aloof from it and not part of the interaction except in the most cursory way, in their laughter or applause. When Goffman applies frame theory to the theatre he sees the divisions of roles that cut across both sides of the divide between stage and auditorium, the actor is present both as ‘stage-actor’ and as ‘stage-character’, both as professional person and as a role within the constraints of the presented world; the spectator is present both as a ‘theatregoer’ and as an ‘onlooker’, both as a patron of the theatre spending time and money, and as a recipient and passive participant in the events of the play.

These roles, those that exist within the play and those that extend beyond it, are constructed by and through frame processes, and as such they are conceivable in different forms. If we can accept that we see the actor in different roles during the evening’s show, as when he takes a bow he leaves behind the character in order to be celebrated in the role of professional, we can also accept this flexibility for the theatregoers too: they too can take on more roles than that of onlooker. As Goffman says, it is not a matter of interactions between the stage and the audience that we should attend to, but the frame that has been engaged to facilitate an evening’s entertainment, and whether or how this frame allows such roles to be taken by different people (Goffman 1986: 127).

Goffman provides a more detailed terminology for the way that these frames of activity are constructed, both in everyday life and in extra-daily activities like drama, theatre and performance. The frames of behaviour that can contain fictional, ‘non-serious’ behaviour such as theatrical acting, storytelling, or practical jokes, are called in Frame Analysis ‘Keyed Frames’. He uses a musical metaphor to imply that they may resemble serious forms of behaviour, but they are being played ‘in a different key’, in a frame that has made it clear that this activity is not to be taken seriously: at least not so far that promises made have to be kept, views expressed have to be maintained, or that action undertaken by a participant in the interaction is to be taken as part of their presentation of their ‘real selves’. Theatre’s material and ritual trappings are designed to assert this ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Process and Procedure
• Chapter 2 Risk and Rational Action
• Chapter 3 Irrational Interactions
• Chapter 4 Accepting the Invitation
• Chapter 5 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index