Audience Participation in Theatre

This book asks that we consider the practices that facilitate audience participation on equal terms with other elements of the theatre maker's art; it offers a theoretical basis for this new approach, illustrated by examples from diverse participatory performances.

"The strength of the book lies in its focus on the invitation to participate, rather than participation per se. White's analysis explores the impact of participation on the audience and examines the audience's place in the aesthetic of participatory work. By bringing the processes and media of audience participation into focus and looking to relevant theories that help unpack and explain the procedures through which practitioners establish these participatory approaches, this book is useful as a practical 'how-to' for those exploring this practice for themselves. By focusing on the activity that makes an invitation understood by an audience and the process through which they accept (or decline) that invitation, the book widens its scope and becomes a useful addition to the more general area of performance analysis. This book addresses the complexities of participation in contemporary performance, including arguments around embodied interpretation and the varied political intentions and consequences of such practice. It will be of great interest to those working within the field of Applied Theatre as well as appealing to more general scholarly interest in Theatre and Performance Studies." - Josephine Machon, Middlesex University, UK

'Gareth White's Audience Participation in Theatre proposes a much-needed theory of the invitation to participate in theatre... [It] is an ambitious book given its scope, shuttling across a range of forums for audience participation, aswell as a diverse selection of scholarly disciplines and fields. But the ambition pays off. Invitations to participate are treated as a tightly defined crux around which a broadly defined field of participatory theatre revolves. This crux is elucidated through the deployment of multiple analytical perspectives, each with their own useful vocabulary and modes of thinking, leaving the reader with a wealth of ideas to work with and apply to aesthetic examinations of audience participation. What emerges is a book that borrows broadly, but appropriately, in setting forward a series of sound theoretical propositions about audience participation at a time when precision on this particular front cries out for attention.' - Adam Alston, Contemporary Theatre Review

Gareth White is a Lecturer in Applied Theatre and Community Performance at the Central School of Speech and Drama, UK.