The Leap of Faith

I've just got back from the Kings of England DIY weekender, and one of the things we were talking about a lot was audiences: what is our responsibility to them? And to a lesser extent: what is their responsibility to us?

I don't think artists tend to be very keen on the idea that the audience has a responsibility to us: we are giving them a gift, or a service, and it is up to them how they consume it. We can't demand a particular reaction to our work, and it's true that my favourite work caters for the audience's personal, individual response- after all, theatre is a live artform, and if it can't encompass the audience's presence its pretty meaningless for them to be there at all. It's so uncomfortable when a performance rests on the audience playing a specific role that feels unnatural, or the expected reaction doesn't materialise, and the show begins to die on its arse like a bad stand up comedy gig.

But theatre has always been, in some sense, an act of complicity with the audience: it has asked them to suspend their disbelief or take the leap of faith- to play along with the actors when they declare a flimsy set to be a forest or to trust them when they tell us Jocasta is dead. There is a beauty in this- that the performance cannot happen without the audience's willingness- that the fact it is happening at all rests in this faith in the artist, and the artist's trust that the audience will have this faith.

I've been giving this a lot of thought in relation to the audio guided projects I've been making, which to some extent rest on the audience's willingness to follow specific instructions, which opens up some troubling ethical questions. I undertook Melanie Wilson and Duncan Speakman's audio guide making day at Forest Fringe a couple of weeks ago, and the little scratch piece I made with my group rested on the audience experiencing most it with their eyes closed, until near the end when they opened their eyes and were confronted with an imaged that jarred with the image that had been created by the audio. We discussed blindfolding the audience but decided not to; there was a danger but also a real joy in the fact that the piece could only work if they wanted it to, if they trusted us when we asked them to close their eyes and keep them closed.

This reflects bigger questions that I have about my audio guide work: why should the audience follow the path I set for them or look where I ask them to? Perhaps the answer lies in the leap of faith: the audience doesn't have to, but we are inviting them to- because this can only happen if we're in it together.

The choice not to blindfold the audience worked about 50% of the time, and I think the experience of this 50% was richer for it. The other 50% opened their eyes too soon, and the illusion was destroyed. After all, keeping your eyes closed in a public space as strangers move around you is a very trusting thing to do. What we forgot is that trust is something that needs to be earned: that we can't expect it, unquestioned, of our audiences. So let's have the fragile moments, the times when the audience could chose to make the edifice come crumbling down, but only after we have got to know- and trust-one another.