The BAC One-on-One festival's 'men only' menu may seem extreme ? but all theatre is constantly pre-selecting its pool of audience members
Last week, searching the programme of the upcoming BAC One-on-One festival ? tastily constructed as a series of menus and grouped under titles such as Dreamy or Challenging ? I selected the Self-Reflective menu, only to discover that it was for "men only". I was puzzled. Why restrict your audience? To paraphrase Arts Council England: isn't great art, great art for everyone? This led to a brief but interesting Twitter exchange with Manick Govinda and Tania El Khoury, whose piece Maybe if You Choreograph me, you Will Feel Better, is on the "men only" menu.
As theatregoers, we like to think that ? ticket availability and budget aside ? we are the ones who do the choosing. We scan theatre listings and decide whether it's to be The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or End of the Rainbow. We choose whether we will pass on seeing Private Lives at the Royal Exchange Manchester, but book to see the new Brad Fraser play because we're fans of new writing. We might eschew the West End for the Spill Festival. Or vice versa.
The holy grail for theatres is being able to put a "house full" sign out every night of the run. In the current funding climate trying to find an audience ? and one who will keep returning ? is even more crucial. Millions are spent on advertising and marketing campaigns, and some venues have tried to encourage audiences to choose not just the show, but the entire programme.
Of course, the idea of audiences choosing is an illusion in any case. Just as everything about certain high street shops is designed to discourage middle-aged frumps such as myself from darkening their doors, so theatre-makers constantly send out messages about their work that will encourage particular audiences to book. When the Fierce festival chose "Live Art. Collision. Hyperlocal. Supernow" as their banner, it's clear that its intended audience is probably not the Les Mis crowd. Theatre is constantly pre-selecting its pool of potential audience members on the basis of context, timing of performances and venue. We have all experienced performances that mean different things in different contexts. Black Watch meant something different in Fife than it did in Dublin. But we still like the idea that it can speak to us all.
Hamlet, which might mean one thing performed on Shaftesbury Avenue and quite another performed in Belarus, can perhaps bridge those divides. But other kinds of performance require a particular audience to reach their full potential. That may be particularly true with relational art (check out this brilliant YouTube clip) when the boundaries between artist and audience have dissolved and the audience is a participant, and in some cases a collaborator. It leads El Khoury to wonder, in a thoughtful blogpost born from her experience of creating such performances, "whether some shows just don't work for specific audiences". She adds: "At the end, if it's really a relationship, it needs to work for me too, not only for them." In which case, perhaps choosing your audience makes complete sense.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/mar/29/theatre-audiences-decide-what-see
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