Moderator: Kelsey Blair
Location: Room 1411 – Pavilion André Aidenstadt – 2920 chemin de la tour- Université de Montréal
(Building 19 on the UdM Map)
In-Person Session
Sponsored by the Department of Theatre – University of Ottawa
Performing in Response to the Anthropocene
In this presentation I argue that there is an ethical imperative to re-imagine and deploy a climate-crisis response theatre—at once theory, practice and pedagogy—and acknowledge it will require dedication, courage and imagination. I believe we must engage in this work across the theatre academy, even though we have no idea of its potential efficacy in the face of an unprecedented set of global crises.
I claim that work of this disposition, whether in practice or the pedagogy that feeds it, may acquire the following features: Such work will break the frame of realism; that is, we ought not content ourselves with staging realistic plays that depict battles against the forces of ecocide. Thus, in crossing over into realms of abstraction we will find ourselves in the zones defined as ‘physical theatre’ and ‘dance.’ As a matter of theory with praxis we ought, when and where possible, exit the buildings where we normally work, and relocate to various outdoor environments to teach, create, supervise creation, and perform. In doing so we may forgo the usual divisions between ‘performer’ and ‘spectator,’ aligning our work with late 20th Century participant performance, defined by Nicholas Bourriaud as “relational aesthetics.” Theatre education will have to respond to the heightened emotional states and needs of its community, invoking the therapeutic potentials that have always abided in the art form. Such work will logically fuse with reflections of a spiritual nature, and may produce events that overlap with ritual observance. Artist-scholars who are committed to developing new approaches to pedagogy in the teeth of eco-crisis may need to learn new skills, or refresh existing ones. As Greta Thunberg has written, “We now need a whole new way of thinking.”
Conrad Alexandrowicz, University of Victoria
CONRAD ALEXANDROWICZ is a Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria, where he teaches movement for actors and directs department productions. He enjoyed decades-long career in as a creator of performance, migrating from dance to theatre. The co-edited collection that he instigated, and to which he contributed, entitled Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis, was published by Routledge in May 2021. He is now at work on another book for Routledge about performance training in the face of linked environmental crises, entitled Performing the Nonhuman: Towards a Theatre of Transformation.
Asking Audiences: Research Methodologies for Centering Audience Expertise
What does asking audiences look like in the field of audience research? What can it achieve, and how? A commitment to ‘asking audiences’ in audience research responds to recent calls for centering audience expertise (Freshwater, Heim, Reason, Sedgman). By inviting audience members to speak for themselves, audience researchers enact a process of co-theorizing with the capacity to generate novel insights (“Recollections on Re-collecting”). This paper evaluates the ways in which audience members communicate and understand their role through a range of embodied behaviours, beyond the frame of researcher led interviews.
Following my experience of ‘audiencing audiences’ to survey audience behaviour for my MA dissertation, I imagine diversifying this prompt of asking audiences (Modern Misbehaviour). To assess theatre etiquette in a post-pandemic period of instability, I learned with theatre audiences through this approach of audiencing, a sensory ethnography research practice of embodying the role of audience member to gain first-hand knowledge of audiences. In light of this experience, I recognize audiences as communicating their beliefs, needs and expectations about theatre in a multitude of diverse ways.
In this paper I survey the rigour and potentiality of these research methodologies as approaches to ‘asking audiences’ and centering audience expertise in this field. While cautious to perpetuate the devaluation of non-expert voices and theorize on behalf of audiences rather than with them, this research instead seeks to recognize the agency of audiences to offer insights through behaviour independent of researcher intervention. Asking audiences remains crucial to audience research, but audience expertise can be centered in more than one way.
Works Cited:
Freshwater, Helen. Theatre & Audience. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Heim, Caroline. “‘Argue with Us!’: Audience Co-Creation through Post-Performance Discussions.” New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2, 2012, pp. 189–97.
Pittini, Jacob. “Audiencing Audiences: Unpacking Audience Research Methodology in the Being Together Project.” Sharing Together (Being Together team internal conference), Presentation, 6 June 2022. Queen’s University, Kingston, ON.
Pittini, Jacob. Modern Misbehaviour: Surveying Post-Pandemic Theatre Etiquette in London, 2021-2023. 2023. Queen Mary University of London, MA dissertation.
Reason, Matthew. “Participations on Participation: Researching the ‘Active’ Theatre Audience.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, 2015, pp. 271-80.
Sedgman, Kirsty. “Audience Experience in and Anti-Expert Age: A Survey of Theatre Audience Research.” Theatre Research International, vol. 42, no. 3, 2017, pp. 307-22.
Jacob Pittini, University of Toronto
Jacob Pittini is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. Jacob is invested in co-theorizing with audiences of contemporary theatre, with his recent MA dissertation surveying how theatre audiences are constructing and deconstructing notions of theatre etiquette in the post-pandemic era.
The Theatre Usher is Watching and Working
The analytical desire to untangle the complex receptive conditions of modern theatre has rendered forth analyses that variously re-configure the spectator — conventionally understood as being essentially passive in their absorption of the spectacle — as: active, emancipated performance interpreters; as ‘prosumers’ who produce in addition to consume the spectacle; as ‘outsourced’ theatre labourers involved in especially postmodern forms of meaning-making; or, as engaged in value-producing labour through the act of spectatorship itself. The spectator’s performance of attentive watching has been rightly configured as a political act, especially in relation to the political economy of theatre.
But spectators aren’t the only attentive watchers who have a presence inside the theatre. The usher, lingering unseen in the darkened corners of the auditorium, provides a useful counterpoint to studies of the spectator. Where the spectator’s leisure-time act of watching has been (re-)inscribed as a theatrical labour (with varying degrees of literalness), the usher (as a faux frais worker) performs types of attentive watching that are unambiguously related to the production processes of theatre.
Focusing its analysis mainly on the usher – a largely undertheorised figure in analyses of theatre’s industrial operations – this paper attends to these differentiated ‘labours’ of watching. Additionally, this paper will further elucidate its claims regarding the political economy of usher ‘spectatorship’ through the comparative examination of two case studies of ‘participatory’ theatre, in which audience members and ushers were respectively invited to take centre stage alongside the performers.
Alessandro Simari, University of Ottawa
Alessandro Simari teaches theatre, early modern literature, and film, most recently at University of Ottawa. His research focuses on the cultural politics and political economy of theatre through the lens of theatre history and contemporary (Shakespeare) performance. He is a member of the Performance and Political Economy Research Collective. pperesearch.com