The role of the spectator - Thesis Proposal Example

Apparently, the passive spectator is a quite new state of art experience, but however has become quite widespread that it is the status quo for the majority of art performances in the West. The passive spectator actually only emerge in the nineteenth century, as art performances initiated its separation into entertainment and artistic forms. Professionals and scholars such as Wagner, with he and Henry Irving with their murky theater, and his ‘mystic chasm’, began several of the numerous initiatives in the nineteenth century that concretely detached the spectator from the performance and dampened ‘spectatorial acts of ownership or displeasure’, or even loud agreement.

This projection of the passive spectator has become quite recognized that in a 1991 article in New York Times on the ill behaviors of theatre spectators, the journalist Alex Witchel did not include the rationale underlying his request for courteousness or admit that genuinely good theatre usually moves or stirs in its audiences just the contrary of the passive silence he wanted. This courteous, overwhelmed response has become the standard. However, we are at a decisive period in performance studies in which we have to perceive contemporary performance beyond the very same borders from which it is breaking out.

This study argues that it is wholly impossible to observe and study contemporary performance while remaining grounded on the perspective as the traditional audience. Not merely do we have to keep on creating and experimenting new performance tactics, but we also have to move our focus to ‘response strategies’, to directly reconstruct the role of the spectator as a contemporary audience. I request the contemporary audience to become engaged in a new form of agreement with the creators of new performance.

Through this study, I request this contemporary audience for several things: to take