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‘You Say Something’: Audience Participation and TheAuthorHelen FreshwaterPublished online: 17 Nov 2011.

To cite this article: Helen Freshwater (2011) ‘You Say Something’: Audience Participation and The Author , ContemporaryTheatre Review, 21:4, 405-409, DOI: 10.1080/10486801.2011.610308

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‘You Say Something’: Audience Participationand The Author

Helen Freshwater

Are theatre audiences in the UK eager toparticipate in performance, or desperate toavoid the exposure and potential embarrass-ment threatened by invitations to participate?According to critic Lyn Gardner, it’s theformer. Writing in 2007 in the collectionProgramme Notes, she argued that the twenty-first century has seen a revolution in theatricalform in the UK, and with it an increasedappetite amongst audiences for theatre whichprovides opportunities for audience participa-tion. For her, experiences of interactive workcan be addictive, as she argues:

The scripted play seems tame once the

audience has tasted this power and the

possibility of interaction. We are no longer

content to sit quietly in our seats when we

can storm the stages. Once we have learned

this new theatrical vocabulary, we want more

opportunities to hear it and speak it, we no

longer find it satisfying merely to stick to

other people’s scripts.1

In 2008 I spent many hours thinking aboutmy recent experiences of audience participa-tion and performance, and wondering whetherthey offered the kind of pleasures and oppor-tunities Gardner’s piece proposed. As readersof my book Theatre & Audience will know, Ichannelled these thoughts into a reading oftheatrical encounters between performers andaudiences in European and North Americantheatre in the twentieth and twenty-firstcenturies. The book describes a range ofperformances which have sought to generateactive audience involvement – from Brecht’sEpic Theatre to The Blue Man Group – andasks a series of questions about continuingbelief in theatre’s potential to influence, impactand transform. I concluded that much of whatnow presents itself as participation in contem-porary performance is really nothing of the sort.Performances which seem to be offeringaudiences the chance to make a creative con-tribution only give them the choice of option Aor option B – or the opportunity to give

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Helen Freshwater, Lecturer in Theatre Studies, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, NewcastleUniversity, Percy Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom. Email: helen.freshwater@newcastle.ac.uk

1. Lyn Gardner ‘There is something stirring . . .’, ProgrammeNotes: Case Studies for Locating Experimental Theatre, ed. by

Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine (London: Live ArtDevelopment Agency, 2007), pp. 10–17 (p. 12).

Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 21(4), 2011, 405 – 409

Contemporary Theatre Review ISSN 1048-6801 print/ISSN 1477-2264 online� 2011 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandfonline.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2011.610308

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responses which are clearly scripted by socialand cultural convention. These strategies are asdisappointing and mendacious, in their ownway, as governmental consultation exerciseswhich simply provide an illusion of publicdialogue whilst functioning to legitimate deci-sions taken by the authorities.2

Others have expressed their ambivalenceabout the value and nature of the participa-tion being offered in contemporary perfor-mance. Sophie Nield’s reflection on ‘The Riseof the Character called Spectator’ in theimmersive work being produced by Shunt,Punchdrunk and Goat and Monkey (whichappeared in CTR’s Backpages in 2008)examines the discomfort, unease and embar-rassment which she finds these pieces pro-duce.3 Her article points out the gap betweenartistic aspirations to give audiences experi-ences of freedom, exploration and adventure,and the careful stage management of boththe environment in which these explorationsoccur and the rules which delimit thespectator’s interactions with them. InvokingNicholas Ridout’s discussion of momentswhen performers address individual audiencemembers directly in Stage Fright, Animalsand Other Theatrical Problems, she concursthat that such moments effectively requirethe annihilation of the self, leaving audiencemembers playing the limited role of theanonymous, impersonal ‘Spectator’.4 Shequestions whether Punchdrunk’s practice ofrequiring audience members to wear masksenhances this effect, asking,

Could the hood, the mask, the enforced

anonymity, perhaps not be merely to give the

audience the illusion of freedom? Does it not

also continue to protect the theatre from

having to see us seeing it, to watch itself be

watched.5

She argues that although the practice mayprotect performers from meeting the gaze ofthe individual spectator – thus maintainingthe distance between watcher and watchedwhich is often considered to be integral to thetheatrical encounter – it leaves spectatorsstruggling to reconcile the disjunction be-tween the way in which these performancesproduce them as a stock character, ‘Spectator’,and the complexity of their own responses.She concludes that although the performancesappear to construct the audience as cipher,ghost or imaginary screen,

we do not necessarily appear so to ourselves –

instead, without the protective apparatus of

characterisation, rehearsal, fictive otherness,

perhaps we risk staring into the black hole of

the theatre itself, mute, stage-affrighted,

awaking to the actor’s nightmare of being

on the stage, and not knowing the play.6

This discussion seemed particularly perti-nent as I sat in the audience for The Author atthe Royal Court in October 2009. The playunpacks the ethical issues raised by theatrewhich explores and represents extreme vio-lence. It portrays the effect that a fictionalRoyal Court production has upon its play-wright, its cast and an audience member. Thespecifics of this play-within-a-play – whichappears to focus upon the brutal sexual abusevisited upon a young woman by her father –are never established, but the damage thatcreating and witnessing it has done becomesincreasingly clear as the show unfolds. Thepiece requires audiences to consider their ownresponses as it invites them to contemplaterape, suicide, paedophilia and decapitation. Itasks them to reflect upon the relationshipbetween looking and doing, and whetherone should watch spectacles of sufferingwhen there is no possibility of making a directintervention.

Individualised direct address, and audienceresponses to it, are central to this piece.During it, the cast of four sit amongst theaudience, who occupy two banks of steeply

2. Helen Freshwater, Theatre & Audience (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

3. Sophie Nield, ‘The Rise of the Character called Spectator’,Contemporary Theatre Review, 18 (Winter 2008), 531–44.

4. Ibid,, p. 533. Nield cites Nicholas Ridout, Stage Fright,Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2006).

5. Ibid., p. 534. 6. Ibid., p. 535.

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raked seating facing each other in an otherwiseempty studio. Before the scripted show begins,the performers engage the people aroundthem in friendly, convivial conversation.Names, occupations and interests are gentlydrawn out and, on both occasions I have seenit, the space has buzzed with anticipatorychatter as the audience wait for the show tostart. There’s no masking, no anonymity.Rather than undergoing an annihilation ofthe self, the spectator is actively encouragedto name and represent themselves as anindividual. There are no phantoms here, noshadowy presences or unseen eyes. Spectatorsare invited to bring the specific details of their

lives and identities to the conversation. Thecast appear to be similarly ‘unmasked’, withcharacters named after the performers whoplay them, who wear their own clothes ratherthan costume. Far from protecting themselvesfrom the individual audience member’s gaze,these performers actively seek it out. So, thereis little distance or theatrical illusion inevidence – at least at first. But confusionabout the role one is expected to perform as aspectator, and the social embarrassment thatcan be produced by direct address, are key tothe effects The Author has produced amongstaudiences. It can also, I think, be seen as aresponse to some of the more glib assertionsthat are made about the link between audienceparticipation and freedom or agency.7

On the night I first saw the show at theRoyal Court, it was received politely. But itwent on to have a rougher ride as it toured,with some audiences members apparentlyfinding its form and the questions it is askingalmost too much to bear. I know that Timand some of the company have found beingon the sharp end of the kinds of refusal andintervention the piece has provoked verydifficult at times. When I interviewed Timin 2010, he described the experience ofplaying to particularly volatile audiences atthe Edinburgh festival as ‘a fucking night-mare’.8 But for me, in the position ofspectator, the strength of these responses is

fascinating. And they leave me with a ques-tion: what is it about the show that generatessuch outrage? It would be easy to imaginethat it is the content that upsets audiences.But no one can be offended by what they areactually required to watch. There’s no spec-tacle here: the piece is all tell and (almost) noshow. What’s more, any audience memberwould find it hard to claim that they hadn’tbeen warned that the show contains disturb-ing material, given the clear statements tothis effect provided by the company andvenues on tickets and publicity. Nevertheless,many people who see The Author seem to

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Image 1 The Author: Audience and Esther Smith (standing). Photo: Stephen Cummiskey.

7. See Kurt Lancaster, ‘When Spectators Become Performers:Contemporary Performance-Entertainments Meet the

Needs of an ‘‘Unsettled’’ Audience’, Journal of PopularCulture, 38 (Winter 1997), 75–88.

8. Tim Crouch in Helen Freshwater, ‘The Author: Tim Crouchin Conversation with Helen Freshwater’, Performing Ethos, 1(Summer 2011), 181–95 (p. 185).

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find it upsetting, disturbing, distressing even.Why?

Here I want to return to Lyn Gardner’scelebration of the idea that interactive, parti-cipative work offers a ‘new theatrical vocabu-lary’, and that audiences ‘no longer find itsatisfying [. . .] to stick to other people’sscripts’ once they have been introduced to it.This assertion might prompt readers to remindthemselves that the scripts audiences andperformers are following in the theatre arenot, of course, only ones that appear on thepage. Much interactive theatre depends uponour familiarity with a vast network of unwrit-ten scripts and ingrained social habitus whichsociologist Norbert Elias describes in TheCivilising Process.9 Much of it works becauseit depends upon audience members observingthe unspoken rules of social interaction – therituals and conventions which frame oureveryday exchanges, as well as our under-standing of the conventions which governappropriate behaviour in a theatre. As Nieldobserves, ‘We try to help the show. We try toplay along. We do our best’.10

The trouble for audiences of The Author isthat the piece plays with and confounds ourdesire to ‘play along’. Unlike some ofCrouch’s earlier plays, such as An Oak Tree(2005) and ENGLAND (2007), it does notbegin with a helpful guide to the experience.Audience members are left to make up theirown minds about the status of what they’reseeing and hearing. It also sends out conflict-ing signals about the kind of participation thatis appropriate, and the roles audience membersshould be adopting within the show. The easy,friendly, unthreatening conversations whichthe performers initiate in the minutes beforethe scripted work begins set up an expectationof dialogue, interaction and exchange. But asthe theatre-loving character originally playedby Adrian Howells, and then by Chris Goode,starts to deliver his lines, addressing theaudience as a whole, the questions he is askingseem, at first, to be rhetorical: ‘This is great,

isn’t this great?’ and then, as he continues,they shift back to being genuine enquiries, ashe asks some of the people sitting around himto offer their names: ‘I’m Adrian and you are?Hello! What’s your name?’11

On the occasions I saw the show, the socialpressure to be polite and agreeable worked togenerate responses to these enquiries. Indeed,the piece is dependent upon these responses,and it assumes that it will produce them. Asthe script notes, the many underscored blankswhich it contains represent ‘the names of anynumber of audience members that ADRIANhas effortlessly and gracefully elicited andlearned. We should get to know quite a fewnames over the course of the play’.12 Crouch canmake this confident assertion because to refuseto offer your name in these circumstanceswould seem unhelpful, churlish or just plainrude. The response of Adrian/Chris to beinggiven these names, however, seems to teaseaudiences with the threat of humiliating,embarrassing exposure – of being madesubject to the gaze of the audience, and anexplicitly objectifying and evaluative gaze, atthat: ‘You’re beautiful! Isn’t _______ beauti-ful? Everyone?’13 So, it’s little surprise thatwhen, a few moments later, the characterpauses and says cheerfully: ‘I’ll shut up. I’llstop. Someone else go!’,14 audience membersare unlikely to take him up on his offer, andthat this silence usually remains when hisrequest is reiterated more reproachfully, aminute or two into the show. It is repeatedby Adrian/Chris for the last time in responseto the departure of what the script refers toas ‘an audience member’,15 and even ChrisGoode’s relatively mild interpretation of thescript’s strong ‘YOU FUCKING SAY SOME-THING!!!’ communicated the character’sfrustration and disappointment.16

The way in which this invitation is made firstcheerfully, then critically, and finally furiously,is clearly a challenge. The character has shifted

9. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. EdmundJepbcott, rev. edn by Eric Dunning and others (Oxford:Blackwell, 2000).

10. Nield, ‘The Rise . . .’, p. 533.

11. Tim Crouch, The Author (London: Oberon Books, 2009),p. 17.

12. Ibid., p. 17.13. Ibid., p. 17.14. Ibid., p. 17.15. Ibid., p. 21.16. Ibid., p. 21.

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suddenly from appearing friendly and chatty tobitter and angry. And as the house lights goout and music plays after this outburst, theinvitation ‘you say something then’, sitsthere, no longer encouraging a contribution,but admonishing the deserting audiencemember – and the rest of the audience, byimplication – for failing to take it up. It is nothard to see how members of the audiencewho are unclear about what their role is –whether what they are watching is scripted,or improvised, and whether they are expectedto be ‘saying something’ or not – may havefound this hard. So the anger amongstaudience members, I think, is partly aproduct of the fact that they don’t knowwhich social script to follow. What’s more, asthe piece unfolds, it becomes clear that thedecision to sit in silence when asked directquestions – such as Tim’s ‘Is it OK if I carryon?’ as he describes the curves of the youngwoman’s body and imagines having sex withher – places audience members in a positionof profoundly compromised complicity; butalso that the show will continue regardless ofresponses to these questions.17

Readers of Theatre & Audience will knowthat despite my scepticism about some of theclaims made about the liberating effects ofparticipatory performance, I also think thatthere are hopeful signs that contemporary

theatre is now providing opportunities for moremeaningful forms of audience participation.For me, this hope resides in companies andperformers which have learned to trust audi-ences, offering them real choices and acceptingthat genuine participation has risks as well aspotentials: that it involves vulnerability on thepart of performers and participants, as bothparties open themselves to unexpected experi-ences and outcomes. Key to this, for me, is theneed for work which gives participants thespace to reflect upon the limitations of creativeor political agency. The Author is a primeexample of this kind of work. The deliberatelydisturbing games that the piece plays with itsaudiences make the act of spectatorship a self-conscious one, as it shows its audiences thatnot all experiences of participation are positive,requiring them to confront the limitations,disappointments and frustrations that aresurely integral to any genuinely participatoryexperience. It also reminds audience membersof the real choices they have as theatre-goers.It reminds them that they can leave, and thatthe convention of respectful silence is just that:a convention. As a consequence the perfor-mers who sat amongst the many differentaudiences for this extraordinary work know,much better than most, the risks and poten-tials involved in opening a dialogue withindividual audience members.

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17. Ibid., p. 23.

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