Past Working Groups

Mário M. da Fonseca presented "History of the Mozambican public: a contribution to understand post-colonial audiences." He discussed the epistemological and methodological options on how history of audience and the public could contribute to understand post-colonial audiences.

In this group workshop, Dr. Elizabeth Swift presented and workshopped her book proposal "Practical Spectating - Engaging [with] theatre in a post-audience era." She explored how contemporary immersive performance is dislodging the familiar hierarchical relationship between performance
and spectator.

This discussion sought to explore the potentials and pitfalls of integrating two methodologies to develop research projects in which the audience’s effort is recognized as citizen-research and the results are recognized as artistic contributions.

Within this discussion, Munia Debleen Tripathi explored their research, specifically highlighting a pattern of anxiousness within spectators that they require "qualifications" to discuss and understand Kolkata theatre. Tripathi discussed the implications of these feelings in connection with the Kolkata theatre.

This working group discussed all things ethics, including institutional research ethics boards, policy statements, processes, challenges and opportunities.

The session focused on Dr. Hadley's new book Audience Development and Cultural Policy, published by Palgrave MacMillan which explores the relationship between audiences and the arts in relation to cutural policy and the arts market.

She shared her chapter-in-progress, forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Composition, in which she uses Linda Hutcheon's Theory of Adaptation (2006, rev. 2013) as a framework for considering how composers approach adaptation into musical forms.

Having recently defended her PhD dissertation, Dr. Lynch discussed her ideas around direct-address in theatre, in which performers 'directly address' the audience. Specifically, she considered relationality and epistemological encounter in performer-audience relations.

Dr. Penner discussed her new project “Exploring IBPOC Experiences in Opera in Canada,” a mixed methods project conceived in partnership with Amplified Opera in Toronto that seeks to improve equity, diversity, and inclusion in the opera industry. As this was her first foray into empirical methods, she discussed the motivations, challenges, and things she learned along the way.

The working group session was an in-depth conversation of finding audiences in the records, remnants and memories of past performances.

In this working group, we celebrated the publication of Julia Ritter's new book Tandem Dances: Choreographing Immersive Performance. The book proposes that choreography is critical to immersive productions in that it serves as a crucial mechanism by which the spectator's role is transformed into that of an active participant within the production, namely, a subject of choreography enacting an improvisational score.

The goal for this session was to facilitate a spirited discussion about how current empirical findings in audience research could help us reimagine ongoing conversations in spectatorship studies and theatre theory writ large.

This working group focused on "bug" by Yolanda Bonnell’s controversial request that reviews for the Toronto production of her show bug be written only by Indigenous, Black, or critics of Colour (IBPOC). This articulated a shared feeling among many IBPOC artists in Canada and abroad that members of the largely white mainstream critical establishment are often ill-equipped to write about their work.

For the working group, Jenny offered her current case study of performance within the Toronto Jewish Diaspora, considering the 2015 play "A Simple Twist of Faith" by Evan and Rafe Malach.

The academic research was supported by her curatorial work including various projects as Programming Coordinator at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (2007-2012), the Situated Cinema Project mobile micro-cinema (Pleasure Dome, 2015), and the Winter Warmer (Sidewalk Labs Toronto, 2019).

This sessions reading was Heim, Caroline. "'Argue with Us!': Audience Co-Creation through Post-Performance Discussions." New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2, 2012, pp. 189

Dr. Kelsey Blair put Michael Warner’s distinctions between audiences, publics, and counterpublics in conversation with Erin Hurley’s concept of “affection” to think through the relationship between performance audiences and publics.

This working group was an exploration of the possible applications of DST/DSP to spectatorship, including the possible nature of our receptive wells, noise, and disruptions, and its important implications on our understanding of any transformative processes that may take place within a performance setting.

In her chapter “The Ontology of Performance,” Peggy Phelan suggests that a feeling of mastery over a visual sits within the gaze of the spectator. Something happens in the transaction of seeing and being seen on stage, and that provides a language of invisibility when that transaction is broken. Jessica Watkins explored the possibilities for performance and research in that invisibility. 

This working group discussed the article "Out at School: Extending “Startling Empathy” Through Image Theatre" by authors Pam Baer, Jenny Salisbury, and Tara Goldstein and reflected on the way our verbatim theatre script "Out at School" was paired with Image Theatre work in an applied theatre class.

This working group on Empathy explored L.B. Cummings' thorough Introduction in Empathy as Dialogue in Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2016. It also included a presentation and exploration of the problem of empathy in Canadian collective creation, supported by case studies "The Public Servant" by Common Boots Theatre and "Out at School", a research-informed theatre piece in development at OISE, through Prof. Tara Goldstein's research team.

This working group, facilitatied by Scott Mealey was an in-depth discussion of Dr. Matt Omasta's work, including a conversation about what lied ahead for CSAR and their next projects.

This working group was an in-depth discussion of intermedial performance as an instrument of public engagement. With lived experience on the one hand and the accumulating ‘bodies’ of archived data on the other, we examined how statistics and informatics are increasingly used to represent and present lives.

The working group meeting explored Gray, J. & Kontos, P. (In Press) "An aesthetic of relationality: embodiment, imagination and playing The Fool in research-informed theatre." Qualitative Inquiry. Gray also explored the aesthetic of relationality through a presentation focusing on the case-study Cracked: new light on dementia, co-created with Partnerships in Dementia Care Alliance, at the University of Waterloo.

This working group included a debate on "The Promise and Pitfalls of the Real" by Dani Snyder-Young. Published in Theatre Survey 57(3). September 2016. Jenny Salisbury, CSAR Associate Director, also presented and explored audiences for non-Realism, focusing on the case-study The Public Servant by Common Boots Theatre.

Signy Lynch, Ph.D. student at York University led a presentationa and discussion about Direct Audience Address, and the theories and methods around new research in this area.

This working group explored both "In Saundry Languages", a devised piece of theatre in multiple languages, and the article "Acts of Spectating: The Dramaturgy of the Audience’s Experience in Contemporary Theatre" by Peter M. Boenisch critical-stages.org/7/acts-of-spectating-the-dramaturgy-of-the-audiences-experience-in-contemporary-theatre/.

This month's agenda focused on the performance spaces of cinema and the art gallery with a presentation and discussion by CSAR member, Melanie Wilmink, from York University.

This working included a presentation and discussion by CSAR associate director, Kelsey Jacobson, engaging a debate around the relationship between theatre of the real and audience members, considering in particular the politics of a perception of "realness". 

This work group continued on from the conversation last month about efficacy and persuasion by discussing "Enhancing the persuasive influence of entertainment-education events". Anat Gesser-Edelsburg and Arvind Singhal Critical Arts 27 (1) 2013. This was followed by a discussion led by CSAR associate director, Scott Mealey, engaging a debate around persuasive theory and audience conditions

Our discussion focused on pages 38 - 61, "Suspicion, frustration and contempt" and "Potent orthodoxies" from Helen Freshwater's 2009 "Theatre and Audience". A presentation and discussion by CSAR associate director Scott Mealey followed the book discussion. He engaged a debate around persuasive theory and artistic styles.

CSAR director, Cassandra Silver led a presentation and discussion, inviting responses to her work on spectatorship and action, looking at the conceptual differences of watching and doing and we explored Janelle Reinelt’s 2014 article, “What UK spectators know: Understanding how we come to value theatre.”