Category: AUDIENCE

We’ve Got To Stop This Audience-Shaming, Says Indie Theatre Exec

Amber Massie-Blomfield, executive director of Camden People’s Theatre: “Not only does this line of discourse do little to change behaviour, it might well serve to alienate the new audiences that are so crucial to the continuing vitality of the art form. … The fear of not knowing how to behave at the theatre is a genuine barrier to entry.”

Theatre Etiquette Is All Over The Place These Days, And Audiences Are Confused, Says Editor

Alastair Smith, print editor of The Stage: “[Once,] the rules may not have been written down, but they were clear and strict … Then along came jukebox musicals that asked you to dance along to a megamix. At Shakespeare’s Globe, actors started engaging with the groundlings. … Next, immersive theatre asked audiences to touch the set, to react to the actors. … Rules of audience engagement vary wildly from one show to the next. And the expectations of what one audience member finds permissible also varies from one person to the next.”

Headphones, Headphones Everywhere – Are They Changing Everything?

“Certainly, headphones are an obvious method of exercising autonomy, control – choosing what you’ll hear and when, rather than gamely enduring whatever the environment might inflict upon you. In that way, they are defensive; users insist upon privacy (you can’t hear what I hear, and I can’t hear you) in otherwise lawless and unpredictable spaces. Should we think of headphones, then, as just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, a tool that edges us even deeper into narcissism, solipsism, vast unsociability? Another signifier of that most plainly American ideology: independence at any cost?”

Louvre Releases An App So You Can Find Your Way Through The Place

“This month the Louvre introduced a geo-locator application for multimedia devices that can instantly calculate a path through the museum from da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. The app is a key part of a 53.5 million euro, or $59 million, project to make the museum more user-friendly and accessible to its more than eight million annual visitors.”

There’s Another App That Has People Thronging To Museums: Pokémon Go

“It turns out that a huge number of Pokéstops, as described in the game’s release, are museums, historic buildings and markers, and even public artworks. … Pikachu seems to be drawn to the electricity of a Dan Flavin at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Charmander’s been spotted hanging around the British Museum’s Parthenon Marbles galleries as well as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.” (Unfortunately, somebody put Pokéstops at the 9/11 Museum and Holocaust Museum.)

Six UK Museums Have Installed Fake Paintings To See If Visitors Can Spot Them

“The secret ‘heist’ has been orchestrated by Sky Arts as part of a month-long national art competition for the new television series Fake! The Great Masterpiece Challenge, where the public are invited to have a go at spotting the counterfeit paintings displayed at six different galleries in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London and Manchester.”