in praise of the passive

clearly we all expect some interaction in relationships, interaction here meaning to affect others and be affected in return. there are limits to interaction in offstage, offline sentient relationships - i bring to mind the drunk on the corner of deptford droadway and the hysterical dog down my road - both of whom seem interested in some kind of interaction with me, seemingly because i'm a sentient female (the drunk) and a sentient pedestrian (the dog). access denied to both.

offline interactions could be characterised within the spectrum of Performance, whether its full on reality tv acting to the social performances of everyday life. by contrast, the great thing about being an offline spectator, is that give or take a few rules - you're left to watch, listen, absorb and think i.e. still active, but having negligible affect on the performer(s, ance).

how much participation or interaction would we want to offer to either an online or an offline spectator? i'm thinking about that vast online mass of humanity out there, and the many ways we can build both participating and interactive and just viewing audiences for our work.

one problematic is that our shows currently cast the offline audience as the primary spectatorship - even if numerically they are dominant - they become the primary witnesses to the event. there are pragmatic and traditional reasons why we do this. but now we can turn our focus towards the onliners. we've used the interactive elements of palace avatar chatrooms, but haven't involved any webcamers yet (for fear we get the equivalent of online drunk/dog?).

btw: last night i listened to bbc radio 4's first interactive radio drama., the dark house. it revolved around three characters in a plot about a haunted house. viewers could vote in run time on whose perspective the story was told from by texting or phoning in. a voter calculation was made every 3 minute and the story changed accordingly. it also used spatialised 3d sound. my attention was drawn to the play's structure and what the other spectators were doing with it. this was novel for about 5 mins and then melodramatic acting and plot failed to hold my attention, so i turned it off.
Karla

how will the audience behave?

there are 2 different audiences - the online audience & the offline audience. in my experience, the online audience is chat-savvy & expects to participate, whereas the offline audience is less au-fait with the concept of the internet in theatre, and therefore more reluctant to contribute. if we *want* the off-line audience to participate, we must create performances that encourage the audience to participate and make it easy. with the online audience, we need to consider the options they have for participation and expect anything ...

questions to start with..

Theatre is exploring new technolgies and concepts and mediums. Will our ideas of performance change when the stage is suddenly digital and on-line? How will the role of the spectator evolve in this context. Do we want them to be as well behaving and passive or will the viewer of the play turn to participator in a medium (chat rooms e.g.) that is profoundly interactive by nature?