Audience perception is important when creating performances. This is because in the end the audience is the one that will be watching it. You could think about “What are they interested in? What matters to them? Why should they care about what we have to offer?”(Jennifer Morrow. 2012) this would interest an audience, if you created a performance around what they like. The success of the musical is dependent on what audience the musical attracts and if the person going to see it enjoys it. When creating a performance/ musical you have to think about your target audience and what they would want to watch.

What determines a response from the audience is down to the audience, the physical, social or cultural aspects of the audience member. What they have been through in their life and if they can relate to the performance on a personal level, they will be able to connect to the performance or enjoy it more. One audience member that watched my performance saw a completely different story to the one I was telling but she connected to the story she created which made her enjoy the performance more. It is mostly about the audience enjoying the performance and connecting with the story instead of understanding the stories true meaning.

The survival of theatre is economically tied to a willing audience- not only those people paying to sit and watch a performance but increasingly those who approve a government, corporate, or other subsidy. (Bennet, S. 1990 Pg4)

This show us that if the performance is unsuccessful it is due to the audience not liking it. Performances rely on the audience's reaction because that will tell us how successful the performance will be. It also shows that if someone knows the story or if they like the sound of it they will watch it. For example if in the description it says this performance is a dance based musical where the story is told through dance, a lot more dancers would go and watch it where as if it is more singing based, people that like singing will see it. So when it comes to a range of audience members that I invited to watch my performances, I got a general response to what a general audience prefers.

“any new directions in the shape of both new playwriting and new performance objectives/techniques depend precisely on that audience”. (Bennett, S. 1990 Pg4) This is saying that what the audience get and understand from the performance is dependent on who the audience is.

There was a flexibility in the relationship between stage and audience worlds which afforded, in different ways, the participation of those audiences as actors in the drama. (Bennett, 1990, P.3)

This quote is saying that the audience gets caught up in stories, they feel like they are involved or apart of the story.

“Alan Sinfield points out: ‘Any artist form depends upon some readiness in the receiver to cooperate with its aims and conventions’ (1983: 185)” (Bennett, 1990, P.4) this is saying that when a performer or artist is shown their piece no matter how clear it is, it can be interpreted differently depending on who the receiver (audience) is.

Grotowski recognises the audience as a crucial part of the theatrical process. Yet dramatic theory has often neglected the role of the addressee, the process of an audience’s interpretation. (Bennett, 1990, P. 4)

This shows that not every director or person in charge sees the audience as a crucial part of the theatrical process.

In almost all reactions to naturalist theatre, the audience has been acknowledged as a creative aspect of the dramatic process, and the spectator generally confronted, often co-opted, into a more direct role in the theatrical event. (Bennett, 1990, P.5)

This is saying that the audience has a main role in the creative process of the performance as it depends what reaction the performance gets and how the audience wants to participate in the performance. When watching the performance of ‘Full Monty’ recently as the actors were dancing the audience were participating willingly by screaming and shouting things to the performers. I feel if the audience didn’t participate the atmosphere of the performance would have been flat, this would affect the performance and the actors. Some performances and musicals are written to get the audience to participate and some are just for the audience to watch.

 A performance of the play requires an audience: indeed, the theatre audience has a great effect on the actual performance. While they are writing plays, dramatists usually have a concept of what kind of audience they hope will eventually see their work. (Shiach, 1987, P. 91)

The audience has a big influence on live theatre performances. Performances are created/written for a certain type of audience to see. For instance when I created my dance I felt people who prefer dance would enjoy it more compared to someone who likes singing. This is why when choosing an audience I had to select random people so I didn’t know their interests and if they prefer dancing or singing. This also tells us that audiences change what performance is popular and what is on as a musical on West End. Because the audience would turn up to see a show they might not like, so what these creators are now doing are creating performances to what the audience members would like to see.

I used dance analysis within my dissertation because I used a framework that described different concepts through dance and how it may be interpreted. I identified a range of contexts for my performance from “the artistic frame in which the work in question was made, to the immediate dance context of the creator and receivers of the piece”, “In analysing dances these elements interact as potential intertexts from which the reader can select in a variety of way to construct multiple interpretations.” (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999, p.11) I did this so I could give the audience an option of what they could base the story on.

The reality of interpretation is that readers enter at different points, select points of interest and, most usually, enter from an interpretive or evaluative stance. The reader then selects (chooses) those ‘facts’ which support that perspective. In the sense the reader constructs the dance. (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999, p. 19)

This relates to how my dance performance was seen by the audience as they created the story themselves and understood it differently.