AUDIENCES

Describe a time when you were part of an audience. How does your experience connect to the ideas we introduced in this week's lecture?

A time I was part of an audience was when my family and I travelled to Sydney's Capitol Theatre in December of 2013 to watch ‘The Lion King: The Musical.’ This type of spectatorship can be understood as passive, supporting “the mainstream goal of creating sealed environments on stage” (Wieder, 2019). Passive audiences are understood to be gullible, easily influenced, feminised and childlike (Middlemost, 2021) and as a result, in such environments,

"The audience is positioned outside the performance as analytical watchers" (Wieder, 2019).

Musicals are performed in a way that fits the performers and compositional teams perspectives of the story; thus, the audience is portrayed the story according to these perceptions, opinions and interpretations. This relates to the characteristic of a passive audience being easily influenced as we are positioned to understand the plot, according to the influence of those performing it. Musicals also rely on the use of sound, music and lighting to convey the themes on stage to their spectators, exploring the presence and strength of emotions on stage.

When Mufasa died in the musical, the lighting grew dark with colours of red and black scattered across the stage, signifying death and destruction. The sounds were loud including thunder and lightning, as storms are associated with feelings of difficulty, weakness and loneliness. The music was played in minor keys to portray negative tones and reflect the events of his death.

The combination of these musical components helps to shape the emotions of the audience as we are made to feel sadness, devastation and sympathy for Mufasa’s death. This reflects the passive nature of the audience as it can be assumed we were ‘feminised’ or ‘too emotional’ and gullible, responding in the appropriate way according to the performers’ adaption and interpretation of the original Lion King.

Oppositely, I have also been part of an active audience; occurring more recently at a Turtle rehabilitation and conservation clinic in Cairns, Queensland. Here, we were given a short presentation of turtle wildlife and granted access to rehabilitating turtles at the centre. An active audience is considered to make sense of the media presented and to be critical of it; at the presentation, we asked questions concerning the information presented to us, including that of both threats to and issues concerning these animals, thus, effectively being critical of what we were told. In addition to this, they are expected to use the media presented to do things in their own lives. Here, the audience was encouraged to partake in marine wildlife conservation strategies such as reducing pollution and plastic waste, educating others about the dangers and threats to these animals; and urging family and friends to engage in proper waste management.

Both of my experiences in both passive and active audiences relate to the characteristics they each possess, as discussed in this week's past lecture and the ideas and theologies presented by Dani Wieder in her essay ‘Activating the Audience’ (2019).