Audience Engagement

In this cultural moment of divisiveness, how is one of the true stories of abortion theatricalized? Holly Derr considers Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s co-production of Roe by Lisa Loomer. 

In this installment, Damon Krometis shares his experience with garnering audience collaboration and gives tips on how to best include audience members in a performance. 

Lauren Smith discusses Westgate Music, a local music store in Missouri, and offers tips for how theatres can engage with their audiences.

Abraham Benson-Goldberg writes about how theatres can be better at attracting young audiences, based on his experiences in Seattle, WA and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Actress/Playwright Romana Soutus shares her process and experience performing her solo show Hyena.

In this first installment, Playwright Rick Stemm discusses his process for creating Heroes Must Die, a video game and production influenced by audience interaction.

Eco-theatre scholar and pioneer Una Chaudhuri considers how theatre is inventing new strategies for performance offered or necessitated by climate change.

In this installment, Damon Krometis discusses the Boston premiere of An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and the ways this production positioned the audience as both spectators and participants.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl discusses the impulse and plan for theatres across the country to host readings of her play The Oldest Boy as a benefit to raise relief funds to aid earthquake victims in Nepal.

Have jokey depictions of elections on stage and screen helped cause a joke of a real-life presidential campaign?  Jonathan Mandell visits two experimental theatre projects that are tackling this year’s presidential election in serious and intriguing ways.

In this installment, Eli Keel discusses Louisville Championship Arm Wrestling and its non-traditional approach to live theatre.

In this installment, Hannah Nielsen-Jones shares her process for stage managing OjO in Pittsburgh and San Diego.

Jonathan Mandell reflects on the Fall season of New York theatre through the lens of Erin Mee’s “Drama and Performance” class at NYU, in which students see and discuss sixteen shows throughout the semester.

In this third installment, Sam Turich discusses the question of identity and its relationship to audiences in Pittsburgh and San Diego.

Scenic designer Joe Klug considers how the proscenium stage impedes engagement and connection with an audience.

Jeff Chang on Detroit-based Complex Movements’ Beware of the Dandelions, a narrative, concert, visual installation, architectural piece, and convening space to distribute revolutionary ideas and activate creative ecosystems and economies of change. 

Jonathan Mastro responds Don Aucoin’s recent Boston Globe article about audible audience responses.

In the third installment of his series, Damon Krometis explores how much agency to give audiences during an interactive performance.

Jonathan Mandell reflects on a recent experience at a Grateful Dead concert, and asks if theatres can adopt some similar strategies for audience engagement.

In this first installment, Artistic Director Jeffrey Carpenter discusses the origins of Bricolage’s OjO: The Next Generation of Travel performance.

In the second installment of his The Audience Position series, Damon Krometis describes the unwritten contract and relationship between actors and audience members.

In his third installment, Michael Lueger discusses the trajectory of theatre audiences from the ancient Greeks to the contemporary moment.

Playwright John J King proposes that instead of scolding and shaming audience members who don’t follow cell phone rules in the theatre, we as a community should spend more time orienting new attendees to our world.