Building an audience: independent venues for the sake of local communities
Audience is a term used to cover diverse and complex realities of so many different people we often know very little about. However, existing images of audiences are never as rich, confusing, diverse, inspiring and surprising as the real world of people coming for a show. Then how should we understand what an audience is? People waiting in their seats for a show to begin? Or the crowd that performers imagine while preparing to get on the stage? Should we consider an audience existed before the representation, like the people itself, or conversely, that we made it come about? Is the audience making the theatre or is it the other way round? How can an organisation build an audience in-between entertainment, social gathering, community development and the need for a self-sustainable financial income?
