1st Edition
Impacting Theatre Audiences Methods for Studying Change
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.
1 Contemporary Spectatorship Research
Dani Snyder-Young and Matt Omasta
2 Key Methodological Concepts in Spectatorship Research
Matt Omasta and Dani Snyder-Young
3 Participant Observation in Practice and Techniques for Overcoming Researcher Insecurity: A Case Study at the Deutsches Theater
Caroline Heim
4 Prioritizing Black Experience, or the Inevitability of Educating White Audiences: A Discourse Analysis
Claire Syler
5 Interviewing Children about Theatre Performance
Johnny Saldana
6 Hashtag Networks, "Live" Musicals, and the Social Media Spectator: Digital Theatre Audience Research Methods
Kelsey Jacobson
7 Drafting Harlem, Revising Melodrama: Archival Insights into Audience Expectation
Christopher Corbo
8 The Gaze Turned Inward: A Reflexive Autoethnographic Approach to Theatre Research
Signy Lynch
9 The Stony Silence: Negotiating Empathy and Audience Expectations in Solo Autoethnographic Performance in Audience Research
Michelle Cowin Gibbs
10 Touching Past Lives: The Limits of Evaluating Immersive Heritage Performance Audiences
Holly Maples
11 Playing Ethnography: Participant Engagement in Role/Play
Celia Pearce
12 Public Facing Dramaturgy as Audience Research: An Interview with Martine Kei Green-Rogers
Martine Kei Green-Rogers and Dani Snyder-Young
13 Theatre for Relationality: A Relational Approach to Design Research
Lisa Aikman, Jennifer Roberts-Smith, and Stan Ruecker, with Kate Crozier, Jessica Hutchison, Carin Lowerison, Signy Lynch, May Nemat Allah, Julie Thompson, Matt White, and Hannah Watts
14 Key Questions in Evaluating Audience Impact: A Mixed Methods Approach in Research-Based Theatre
Jennica Nichols, George Belliveau, Susan M. Cox, Graham W. Lea, and Christina Cook
15 (Ac)Counting for Change: A Quantitative Approach to Recognizing and Contextualizing Shifts in Spectatorial Thinking
Scott Mealey
16 Poetic Inquiry and/as Theatre Audience Research
Monica Prendergast
17 Playful Research
Matthew Reason
Biography
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.
