Who is the audience?

In site-specific performance the lines between audience and performer are blurred. In traditional theatre spaces there are distinctive boundaries drawn between audience and performers. However, site-specific performance does not have the same restrictions. It rejects the idea of the fourth wall and attempts to immerse the audience into the performance. In doing so it poses the question are the audience also the performers? Can this question ever really be answered? Arguably it is subjective to each performance, sometimes the roles change between the theatre makers being the performers and the spectators being the performers. All that can be said for certain is site “enable[s] this audience to have a ‘radically different relationship’ to the performance” (Wilkie, 2002, 154). In the performance we are trying to create, the roles are often reversed as they will watch us and take part as we give them instructions, and we will watch them as they undertake them. We will also have a second “audience that doesn’t know it is one” (Wilkie, 2002, 152) in the form of the users that inhabit the library. They may be watching what we are doing and again we will be watching them. However, even though they never planned to be a part of the performance they will be. Broadly speaking, audience is very important as you will never know how they will react to the content of a performance. At certain points they will become the focus of the performance and therefore will be the performers. They will have no script and therefore not prepared for what will happen. Perhaps that’s what makes site-specific performance interesting, the aspect of experimenting and hoping that your audience joins in.