From audience to participants: new thinking for the performing arts

Abstract

Facing excess capacity and changing demographics, theatres are struggling to maintain audiences, while their marketing and outreach strategies often fail. Our participation studies reveal that theater-goers increasingly value venues, not just performances, challenging owners and directors to curate settings as part of their offerings. People also seek active engagement in artistic creation and expression, even co-curating. But productions remain closely tied to Euro-American fine-arts conventions, rarely reflecting working-class, racial, ethnic, and youth cultures. Recent decisions to build or renovate large performing arts venues in the us and uk have taken these new sensibilities into account in a variety of ways.