RESEARCH PROJECT

At the beginning of the creation process for Ankle Deep Water, I was not particularly focused on the performer-audience relationship. It was not until I had a discussion with my mentor about one particular section that it sparked something in my mind. The section was the one lighthearted part of the work, where I danced around in a lackadaisical and carefree way to show growth and healing. My mentor had suggested doing something similar at the end of each rehearsal to help ease the heaviness of the work and to put me in a better headspace as I left the rehearsal space. This became part of my standard practice. In some of those “boogie sessions” I would clap my hands to the beat and it reminded me of watching live music where you are often invited to clap along. My thought process was to add this into the show, encouraging the audience to clap along while I danced to see how this would change their engagement with the work. 

I was anxious to see if people would even feel comfortable to participate in this way. I informed a few people who I knew were coming to see the show that they were supposed to clap along when I encouraged them to. In hindsight, I did not need to do this. Even during the shows where I had not specifically informed anyone of the clapping beforehand, people seemed enthusiastic to join in. I did note that when the audience was larger, the clapping continued for longer. 

​

I was fortunate enough to receive feedback from a few attendees of the show. One person said that they weren’t “sure if they were allowed to”, feeling as though it might be against theatre etiquette. Another person said they felt nervous, almost as if they had become the performer at that moment. A third person noted that being encouraged to join in had “bought a huge smile to [his] face”.

​

One other small thing that I purposely did in the work was to allow the panic attack moments to last longer than was comfortable. I knew when I began to create this piece that I wanted the audience to feel on the verge of wanting to interfere because of concern. I think this was particularly effective for the people who knew me outside of the performance. However, some people I did not know spoke to me afterwards and confessed they were extremely close to interfering, but theatre etiquette held them back. 

​

Contrasting this with the clapping experience, I began to understand that the performer holds a subtle power, in that the audience looks to the performer for how to respond to a situation. T

​

What I learnt from this experiment is that the engagement increased with encouraged participation. I also was made aware of people's hesitancy to break the unspoken agreement between audience and performer that the audience sits and watches and the performer performs. Although this was only one small instant of experimentation with the relationship and power relation of audience and performer, I am eager to explore this further in my upcoming work. In the rehearsal process for What She Does For Me I have already begun to play with new ideas. One such idea is to do a small, free, interactive performance in a public space. I am excited to see how I can engage with a more diverse audience and how people might react when confronted with challenging ideas in a space that they would not normally expect to view this kind of work. 

Although I did not have as much of an opportunity to research the audience-performer relationship as I would have liked this year, I am definitely excited to expand upon this research in my upcoming projects. I have multiple plans in place for experiments in this area and am excited to see what else might come out of these experiments.