Audience Studies Theories

Effects models

The hypodermic needle model
The intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver.

Two-step flow
The people with most access to media, and highest media literacy explain and diffuse the content to others. This is a modern version of the hypodermic needle model.

Uses and gratifications
People are not helpless victims of mass media, but use the media to get specific gratifications.

Reception theory
The meaning of a "text" is not inherent within the text itself, but the audience must elicit meaning based on their individual cultural background and life experiences

Obstinate audience theory
This theory assumes that there is a transactional communication between the audience and the media. The audience actively selects what messages to pay attention to. The Zimmerman-Bauer study found that the audience also participates in the communication by influencing the message.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_theory

"interactive" theatre

... isn't all theatre "interactive" theatre? Doesn't it promote active listening?

Does the theatre need to train it's audiences for 100% active listening by staging plays unified by a single plot and action and set of metaphors? Or should it accept them as they are, and provide multiple focuses, multiple narratives?

"interactive" gaming

aren't all games inherantly "interactive"

On Audience Response

Allowing the audience to inhale and exhale with the performers... although the space is divided, the parameters are that it is an attempt at defining the space as democratic.

And is it sad that giving this speech in the theatre would confuse/enrage/alienate audience members? Instead, they are chastised for living in the 21st century, going to the bathroom, or sucking on a cough drop. Can you imagine if theatre audiences were permitted and encouraged to be this loud?

Choral Roles

Audience Interaction

I'D RATHER BE A CYBORG THAN AN ACTOR... part 7

While technology may not be THE answer, it may be AN answer. It seems that to help rediscover the theatRE, we need to rediscover the theatER. As times change and as tastes change, the theatre has always been forced to reinvent itself. As members of the information age, we are in constant dialogue with technology. For theatre audiences that may not have been previously conditioned (for whatever reasons) to be in concrete dialogue with theatrical performances, why not take an aspect of life where dialogue is essential for a use value. If we cannot control a computer, then it is no use to us. Likewise, if we--as audience members--have no control/immediate identification with a performance, then it is no use to us, and thusly no use to society.

I've come to the opinion that, for theatre to succeed, the theatre must be like contemporary religions. Theatre has the power to save--to convert--but first the theatre must be welcoming of its patrons. We must offer ways for them to express, perhaps help instead of show, how to express. In techno-babble, traditional performance utilizes actions that work as a closed system: applaud, laugh, sit and observe, get up and leave. If we wish to bring people to action, we must let--and help them--to act in an open-source way. This was the way of the ancients and somehow it has been lost.