Frances Babbage

Active audiences: spectatorship as research practice

I’ve run for hours in the woods at night, getting muddy and exhausted. I’ve been strongarmed down a London high street by a security guard. I’ve had secrets whispered in my ear, and offered one in return. I’ve lain in someone else’s bed, my head on their pillow. And I’ve sat in an auditorium: intrigued, or disappointed, or delighted, or overwhelmed, or combative, or bored, or on edge. All these are my spectator experiences: I love theatre and see all I can. But I am also a researcher of performance, an academic, and so approach theatregoing critically with particular questions in mind. Unsurprisingly, my encounter with productions as audience is shaped by a research agenda, although I hope I remain open to the unknown ‘offer’ extended by the work itself. What weight does spectator experience carry in that research process? What does it matter what I did, felt, said, puzzled over, during the event? And later, writing about the work I witnessed and was a part of, (how) can I reflect meaningfully on that individual, partial and biased practice of participation and treat this as a source of legitimate knowledge, worthy to be shared? Over the last 20 years or so, practice-as-research has become firmly established as a productive, valid, widespread and diverse mode of critical enquiry. Within the theatre, practice-as-research comfortably encompasses exploratory investigations by actors and devisor-performers, in modes of direction, generating text, in design, with sites and spaces, with light and sound, in digital media. All these forms of practice can function as a mode of research enquiry, not simply by bringing the added dimension of embodiment or material realisation to the pursuit of a research question, but as the means of gaining knowledge that could not otherwise have been uncovered. Is there a place in this vibrant, active field of practice-as-research for the practice of audiences? By this, I am not thinking of artist-led investigations into the spectator’s role, or of research into audience behaviour more generally, but refer rather to an audience-led ‘practice’ of attending performance: a practice of watching, thinking, feeling, interpreting (and reinterpreting) and – sometimes – of moving, speaking, doing? In other words, to what extent could the theatre spectator be regarded as a researcher working through practice, and what might be the implications of doing so? A peculiarly self-consciously focused practice of spectatorship has become increasingly fundamental to my research process. I seek out, consult and draw knowledge from live performances, regarding this activity not as the equivalent of studying materials in written form (I have seen this production/I have read that book) but in recognition that experiential engagement produces discoveries that cannot be reached by other means. As audience, I pay attention not (only) to the show as something that exists outside of/separate from me,

The Animate Cabinet: Engaging (with) Archives in the Gallery

The room contains little: a display cabinet of dark wood, glassfronted; a child-size wooden chair. On one wall hangs a simple picture: in it the outline of a swallow, crudely shaped in wire, perches on a real branch. An old white lace curtain blurs what would have been the view from the room into the yard outside. As a visitor, you can sit or crouch down, as you prefer, to observe what is inside the vitrine. On each of its three shelves are cups and saucers in domestic display: pretty, not valuable. The top shelf also holds a model caravan, fashioned in unbleached calico, which would fit in the palm of your hand. On the bottom shelf is a leather suitcase (shut), approximately three teacups wide. On the centre shelf, behind china, is an ornate photo frame. The picture inside is moving. There is no sound, only a changing landscape sharply bordered like a view from a train window. But the movement of the scene is slower than this implies; the little caravan now seems to you a clue. The photo-film is empty of people. It captures countryside: maybe moorland, or seaside. Wind sweeps through the picture, trees swaying, a hot air balloon overhead, some laundry flapping on a line. You realise that the action is not photographed but animated, each frame with the smudgy quality of coloured chalk; the peachy haze of sunrise or sunset overlays it, interrupted by the occasional black line, or bright scribble of a lightning flash at the moment when the sky clouds over. Perhaps the seaside, you conclude: the teacups have sand in them.

The Female Quixote or The Adventures of Arabella: concerning a Narrative containing much that is Dramatic, and in which an Audience is expected to be extremely interested (and in which the Footnotes are not the least Part)

Abstract The article which follows is an experiment in ‘performative writing’. It is the text—with stage directions—of a research paper presented at the University of Leeds on 14 February 2001. The explicit topic of the paper is Charlotte Lennoxs The Female Quixote (1752), a satirical novel based around the adventures of a heroine who runs her life according to the principles of romantic fiction, with devastating consequences for all around her. Lennoxs novel considers the reliability of histories and their authors, the extent to which a woman can defy convention and control the narrative of her life, and the humiliation she risks if she attempts to ‘act’ within the public sphere. The presentation examines these questions, whilst drawing on a variety of theatrical strategies to explore a related set of issues: the authority of the (young, female) academic, the impact of formal and less formal ‘voices’ and the research paper as performance event.

A review of The Open Page: A Journal of Women's Thoughts, Questions and Visions for Theatre, edited by Geddy Aniksdal, Maggie Gale, Teresa Ralli and Julia Varley. Issue one: “Theatre‐Women‐Myth”

A Review of The Open Page: A Journal of Womens Thoughts, Questions and Visions for Theatre, Edited by Geddy Aniksdal, Maggie Gale, Teresa Ralli and Julia Varley. Issue One: “Theatre‐Women‐Myth” The Magdalena Project, January 1996, 85pp.

A review of Modern Drama by Women 1880s‐1930s: An International Anthology, edited by Katherine E. Kelly

A Review of Modern Drama by Women 1880s‐1930s: An International Anthology, Edited by Katherine E. Kelly Routledge, London, 1996, 319pp, ISBN: 0–415–12494–8 (softback)