How Do We Engage the Audience?

Most of the shows we have seen so far have have an interactive element of some sort and/or an awareness of their space and audience. For example, when we saw Reise! Reiser! one of the first few things that one of the actors did during the show was comment on how hot the space was and proceeded to have the windows opened. In Hamlet, somebody in the front row fell asleep, and the person playing Hamlet stopped what he was doing, went up to her, and humorously tried to wake her up (he even said something along the lines: you're falling asleep already? We still have two hours to go!). 

During our "lecture" time today, we were talking about this aspect of German theater. Why do actors have to stay inside this little bubble and ignore what is going on throughout the entire space? Why can't they acknowledge their audience and use them in order to make the experience more...inclusive?   Maybe this is what we need in our performances to engage the typical Theater Appreciation kid. Maybe instead of ignoring that person texting in the middle of the show, we should do something like having El Diablo creep from behind and snatch the phone for a little bit. Or have La Muerte just sit next to said person and stare that person down with a very mischievous smile until that phone glows no more.

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about using that in our work back home. A part of me still holds firmly to the idea that the audience back home needs to put in their end of the bargain every time they enter a theater space. It heard it during my FIGS theater class and Theater Appreciation—a show is, in essence, a contract between the actors and audience. The actors tell the story, and the audience experiences something while being respectful. 

Yet, I’m okay with that being done here in Berlin’s theater scene. It just...works over here. I don’t feel like I have been taken off course from my experience—it’s part of it. In a weird way, it almost felt like these sort of divergences (for lack of a better word) gave me a better sense of a certain characters; it gave them more dimension/made them more like me and you. But I don’t know if I would get these sentiments if I saw the same thing being done in American theater. I probably would feel as though my experience was ruined not only by the fellow audience member, but from the actor stepping away from the moment in the play.

I’m still (really) struggling as to why I feel that way, but I keep going back to the audiences’ general attitude of theater. Is it working because the audience is generally more open to receiving what is being given to them, and they can pull this off without the audience feeling as if their experience is ruined?

But that just goes back to the audience. 

And even when I try to think of it in terms of not putting any blame on the audience, I still can't resist thinking about the audience.