Theatre and Its Audiences: Reimagining the Relationship in Times of Crisis

Written in the aftermath of the Covid crisis, this open access book brings the past, present and future of theatre-going together as it explores the nature of the relationships between performance practitioners, arts organisations and their audiences.

Proposing that the pandemic forced a re-evaluation of what it means to be an audience, and combining historical and current cultural sector perspectives, the book reflects on how historical conventions have conditioned present day expectations of theatre-going in the UK. Helen Freshwater examines the ways in which developments in technology, architecture and forms of communication have influenced what is expected by and of audiences, reflecting changes in theatre’s cultural status and place in our lives.

Drawing on the first-hand experiences of festival director and performance practitioner Kate Craddock, it also contends that practitioners now need to turn their attention to care, access and sustainability, arguing that the pandemic taught us, above all, that it is possible to do things differently. Part vision, part provocation, part critical interrogation, Theatre and its Audiences offers an insightful appraisal of past norms and assumptions to set out a bold argument about where we should go from here.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Newcastle University.

Kate Craddock is the Founder and Festival Director of GIFT: Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, UK, an annual artist-led festival celebrating contemporary theatre. Since 2005, Kate has worked across academic roles and cultural sector contexts, and is regularly invited to speak as a panellist at international festivals. Kate was recipient of the Theatre Fellowship with the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme 2018/19.

Helen Freshwater is Reader in Theatre & Performance at Newcastle University, UK. She is the author of Theatre & Audience (Methuen Drama, 2009) and Theatre Censorship in Britain: Silencing, Censure and Suppression (2009). Between 2017-2020 she was Co-I on ’Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts’, an AHRC-funded project.