Location: Barbara McIntyre Theatre
Moderator: Jenny Salisbury
Kelsey Jacobson, “Theatre People: Constructions of Audiences as Consumers, Co-Creators, and Curators in Memory and Archive”
Recollections from audience members suggest that audiencing, and the personal archiving of theatrical experiences, can be a deeply impactful process of identity-creation, one that is rooted in strongly held beliefs around role and responsibility. Data collected during in-depth interviews with eighteen audience members across Canada between 2021 and 2025 suggest that for theatre fans, identification as a theatregoer involves deep adherence to expectations of behaviour, critical taste, and affective response. In addition to strong beliefs around the role of the audience as an integral co-creator of experience, those interviewed also frequently pointed to robust personal collections of material or other reminders of experience, ranging from collections of magnets and programmes to excel spreadsheets. Such personal archival practices mark audiences as nuanced curators of memorialization beyond the delineated time and space of performance. Finally, the practice of theatre-going inevitably invokes questions around the role of audiences as consumers and the potential of the ‘algorithmic audience’ whose desires to acquire material and enact preferences of taste drives capitalistic imperatives.
Drawing from studies in fandom, theatre and performance and affect theory, this presentation will analyze intersections of identity-creation with creative consumption, unpacking the ways in which self-identified ‘theatre fans’ operate as co-creators, curators, and consumers of theatre. Such analysis prompts wider consideration of the ways in which theatre may drive reification of hegemonic and capitalistic norms even as individuals find pleasure in identifying as ‘theatre people.’ Ultimately, it raises the question of what constitutes ‘theatre people’ and when do personal archives cross the boundary of capitalism standards?
Frédérique LeBel, “Ellen Terry’s Ophelia as Performance Repertoire”
On December 30, 1878, Ellen Terry performed the character of Ophelia for the first time at the Lyceum Theatre, London, to critical acclaim. After seeing her, Edward Gordon Craig recollects, “When the curtain came down, the thought left with us was not ‘That’s the way to do it’ but ‘It is the only way to do it’” (qtd. in Cockin 426). Evidently, her performance became a benchmark for stage portrayals of Ophelia: well into the 20th century, critics continue to compare other actresses to Terry, and to this day, her name frequently appears in studies on Ophelia.
My presentation examines the passing down of elements of performance from one actor playing Ophelia to the next—beginning with Terry. The performance elements I highlight include gestures and costumes, but also a period-appropriate adaptation of madness for the stage. Terry famously visited an asylum to prepare for her role; what she saw informed her performance, and remnants can still be observed in contemporary productions, despite an evolving understanding and conceptualizing of mental illness.
I consult 19th-century reviews and criticism, which offer precise descriptions of Terry’s performance, as well as her autobiographical writings, to demonstrate how her portrayal influenced stagings for almost 150 years, such as Muriel Hewitt in 1925 (Birmingham Repertory Theater), Frances Barber in 1984 (Royal Shakespeare Company), and Siân Brooke in 2015 (Barbican Centre). I trace specific elements of Terry’s 1878 portrayal to argue that contemporary Ophelias have inherited an embodied repertoire of past performances.
Biographies:
Kelsey Jacobson is an associate professor at the DAN School of Drama and Music and Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Queen’s University. She is also a co-founding director of the Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research.
Frédérique LeBel is a PhD student in English at Université de Montréal. Their dissertation considers the two-way transaction between Ophelia’s onstage history and the history of madness in women throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. They worked as an English CÉGEP teacher and consistently hold TA positions in their department.