Agency, Causal Power, and Social Responsiveness in Participatory Performance: a Practice-Based Investigation
The rise of popularity of immersive theatre in the first two decades of the twenty-first century has led to an increased interest from both theatre-makers and theorists in participatory performance, including discussions of audience members’ agency. Regularly considered from an aesthetic position, existing discussions of agency tend to be based around phenomenological frameworks, analysing the audience member’s agency from an individual-experiential perspective. This exegesis argues that considering agency purely from this position is inadequate for understanding the powers that audiences may wield over a performance’s content or outcome, and that doing so requires considering agency as regards causal power, collectives, and social relationships. Asking how audience members may wield causal power over a participatory performance’s outcome, this exegesis outlines four practice-based research projects and the theoretical frameworks underpinning them. The first three projects examine already-existing participatory formats, investigating audience agency from phenomenological, collective, and social perspectives. The fourth uses these results to develop a practical-theoretical framework for performances within which the audience shares causal power over the outcome with the theatre-makers. This project’s findings offer deeper understandings of agency than a purely phenomenological conception allows, considering agency as understood in social theory, particularly regarding causal power in collective systems and structures. In doing so, it highlights structural issues present within existing participatory frameworks which impact upon the audience’s agency to affect the performance’s content and outcome. In offering a framework within which audiences share causal power with theatre-makers, the findings in this exegesis have value for any practitioners or theorists interested in exploring power dynamics and agency within participatory performance.
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