ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Audience Experience identifies a momentous change in what it means to be part of an audience for a live arts performance. Together, new communication technologies and new kinds of audiences and audience research have transformed the expectations of performance, and The Audience Experience explores key trends in the contemporary presentation of performing arts for audiences, among them convergence marketing and cocreation, children and young people as audiences, and the screening of live performance. The book also presents case studies of audience engagement and methodology, reviewing both conventional and innovative ways of collecting and using audience feedback data. Directed to performing arts companies, sponsors, stakeholders, and scholars, this collection of essays moves beyond the conventional arts marketing paradigm to build new knowledge about how audiences encounter, value and experience quality in the performing arts.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jennifer Radbourne is former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, Melbourne, where Hilary Glow is associate professor in the School of Management and Marketing and Katya Johanson is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts.

REVIEWS

"A collection of essays based in recent empirical experiments, this volume aims to shift the goals of audience research away from the marketing of cultural products and toward the investigation of aesthetic experience....Recommended."

— Choice

“This is a field of scholarship that is entirely new to me, and yet I was able to read several of the articles as introductions to the existing debates. These are some of the most pressing issues in the arts of our time, and as an accessible primer to some of the methods and theories that are available The Audience Experience may prove valuable to many.”

— Tempo

“Useful and stimulating.”

— Ivan Wadeson, Arts Professional

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Introduction

Chapter 1: Knowing and Measuring the Audience Experience

Jennifer Radbourne, Hilary Glow and Katya Johanson

Chapter 2: “Live at a Cinema Near You”: How Audiences Respond to Digital Streaming of the Arts

Martin Barker

Chapter 3: Challenging Cultural Authority: A Case Study in Participative Audience Engagement

Hilary Glow

Chapter 4: All the World’s a Stage: Venues and Settings, and Their Role in Shaping Patterns of Arts Participation

Alan Brown

Chapter 5: In the Context of Their Lives: How Audience Members Make Sense of Performing Arts Experiences

Lois-Foreman Wernet and Brenda Dervin

Chapter 6: Amateurs as Audiences: Reciprocal Relationships between Playing and Listening to Music

Stephanie E. Pitts

Chapter 7: The Longer Experience: Theatre for Young Audiences and Enhancing Engagement

Matthew Reason

Chapter 8: Innovative Methods of Inquiry into Arts Engagement

Lisa Baxter, Daragh O’Reilly and Elizabeth Carnegie

Chapter 9: Structure and Aesthetics in Audience Responses to Dance

Kim Vincs

Chapter 10: Converging with Audiences

Jennifer Radbourne

Chapter 11: Listening to the Audience: Methods for a New Era of Audience Research

Katya Johanson

Index