How do we help audiences see the joy of exploration?

kate anderson, 21 September 2012

We find that audiences are resistant to coming for work in progress, improvisations, readings, and the like? But so often when you get them to come they love being part of the process - seeing an early work - feeding back… What can we do?

BAC scratch nights were popular, and what made them popular was partly the chance to participate. But were they just popular with with arts people?

Participation is generally popular, so you can imagine why seeing new work and feeding back or disucssing appeals to people in practice - but again there is little crossover between the populatity of taking part and wanting to attend theatre. We experience few people who participate in amateur theatre necessarily coming professional - or other amateur - shows…

Are audiences resistant to unfinished or new work because they don't want to take a risk and they don't know what will happen to them? People like us, who work in theatre feel safe in them so embrace the ‘You will be surprised..’ concept, but then we would wouldn't we?!

However, event and promenade type performances which are ‘unknown’ (Punchdrunk/Dreamthinkspeak) seem to be very appealling people who may not come to theatre often - perhaps playing into to appeal of participation.

If we took away the financial risk of ‘new’ work, free tickets etc, would that be enough, or is the main investment the time and expectation of the evening? Often people have got a group together, paid for baby sitters, booked a restaurant. They can feel that their reputation with their friends rests on it being a good experience - so it is no wonder they don't want to take a risk. Even culture vultures on average only attend up to 3 times a year…

But what about different audiences types? We don't experience having ‘one loyal audiences’ any more but a variety of types, - one of these types might be more adventerous…

We think it is about trust, targeting the right type of people, building trust, making it easy for people, making sure they are encouraged to feedback and making sure they know that they can say they didn't like the piece…

Tags:

promenade, audience, new work, attendance, financial risk, Audience, participation, culture vultures