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This edited collection explores methods for conducting critical empirical research examining the potential impacts of theatrical events on audience members.
Dani Snyder-Young and Matt Omasta present an overview of the burgeoning subfield of audience studies in theatre and performance studies, followed by an introduction to the wide range of ways scholars can study the experiences of spectators. Consisting of chapter-length case studies, the book addresses methodologies for examining spectatorship, including qualitative, quantitative, historical/historiographic, arts-based, participatory, and mixed methods approaches.
This volume will be of great interest to theatre and performance studies scholars as well as industry professionals working in marketing, audience development, and community engagement.
List of contents
1 Contemporary Spectatorship Research 2 Key Methodological Concepts in Spectatorship Research 3 Participant Observation in Practice and Techniques for Overcoming Researcher Insecurity: A Case Study at the Deutsches Theater 4 Prioritizing Black Experience, or the Inevitability of Educating White Audiences: A Discourse Analysis 5 Interviewing Children about Theatre Performance 6 Hashtag Networks, "Live" Musicals, and the Social Media Spectator: Digital Theatre Audience Research Methods 7 Drafting Harlem, Revising Melodrama: Archival Insights into Audience Expectation 8 The Gaze Turned Inward: A Reflexive Autoethnographic Approach to Theatre Research 9 The Stony Silence: Negotiating Empathy and Audience Expectations in Solo Autoethnographic Performance in Audience Research 10 Touching Past Lives: The Limits of Evaluating Immersive Heritage Performance Audiences 11 Playing Ethnography: Participant Engagement in Role/Play 12 Public Facing Dramaturgy as Audience Research: An Interview with Martine Kei Green-Rogers 13 Theatre for Relationality: A Relational Approach to Design Research 14 Key Questions in Evaluating Audience Impact: A Mixed Methods Approach in Research-Based Theatre 15 (Ac)Counting for Change: A Quantitative Approach to Recognizing and Contextualizing Shifts in Spectatorial Thinking 16 Poetic Inquiry and/as Theatre Audience Research 17 Playful Research
About the author
Dani Snyder-Young is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Northeastern University, USA, and the author of Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy(2020).
Matt Omasta is Professor of Theatre Arts and Associate Dean of the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University.
Summary
This edited collection explores methods for conducting critical empirical research examining the potential impacts of theatrical events on audience members.
