Performance Lecture: Relationship with an Audience

Our performance lecture looked at the relationship with an audience and aimed to depict researched material about chosen practitioners and theatre styles in an unconventional manner that demonstrated the techniques explored in our readings.

When considering material for our performance lecture it was decided that, by selecting such a specific topic as ‘the relationship with the audience’, it would be beneficial to look at the works and styles of different practitioners. Using this method illustrated that the techniques of our chosen practitioners: Bertolt Brecht, Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment), Eugene Ionesco, Peter Handke and Luigi Pirandello often interconnected and influenced one another. It was found that by researching practitioners we transitioned into also researching their favoured style of theatre, such as Brecht looking at Epic Theatre or Etchells and Postmodern Theatre.

By looking at these styles and techniques of theatre it was found that although the practitioners’ ideologies were similar, the theatre type demonstrated an aim to create a particular relationship with a specific audience type, which is what we wished to highlight. By assigning each member of our group a specified style and practitioner to research and represent proved useful in order to cover a wide breadth of research. It also allowed our audience to physically see the similarities and differences between styles and eras by having a ‘representative’. This was used as a basis to structure the research material into a slightly unconventional lecture.

By structuring this material into a reality styled performance, with which the audience would be familiar, made the lecture recognisable, engaging and fitted the idea of ‘audience interactivity...

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...mproved there would be a need more ‘lecture’ type aspects as other performance lectures seemed to have leaned towards. This would include more of an open discussion that felt comfortable, and the inclusion of more conventional ways of depicting material in order to keep the lecture balanced such as a slideshow. Similarly other lectures included re-enactments of texts which could have been beneficial when discussing the styles of practitioners.

In conclusion, the performance lecture seemed successful in conveying the researched material in an unconventional way and also in demonstrating the techniques and styles researched. However, it may have benefitted from a better balance between academic and satirical.

Works Cited

Esslin, Martin. The theatre of the absurd. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Print.

Etchells, Tim. Certain Fragments. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.