'Actors always talk about what the audience does. I don’t understand, we are just sitting here.' Audience as Performer proposes that in the theatre, there are two troupes of performers: the actors and the audience. Although academics have scrutinised how audiences respond, make meaning and co-create while watching a performance, little research has considered the behaviour of the theatre audience as a performance in and of itself. This insightful book describes how an audience performs through its myriad gestural, vocal and paralingual actions, and considers the following questions: If the audience are performers, who are their audiences? How have audiences’ roles changed throughout history? How do talkbacks and technology influence the audience’s role as critics? What influence does the audience have on the creation of community in theatre? How can the audience function as both consumer and co-creator? Drawing from over 140 interviews with audience members, actors and ushers in the UK, USA and Austrialia, Heim reveals the lived experience of audience members at the theatrical event. It is a fresh reading of mainstream audiences’ activities, bringing their voices to the fore and exploring their emerging new roles in the theatre of the Twenty-First Century.

Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal all figure in Bartsch's shrewd analysis of historical and literary responses to the brute facts of empire; even the Panegyricus of Pliny the Younger now appears as a reaction against the widespread awareness of dissimulation.

What would you see if you attended a trial in a courtroom in the early Roman empire? What was the behaviour of litigants, advocates, judges and audience? It was customary for Roman individuals out of general interest to attend the various courts held in public places in the city centre and as such the Roman courts held an important position in the Roman community on a sociological level as well as a letigious one. This book considers many aspects of Roman courts in the first two centuries AD, both civil and criminal, and illuminates the interaction of Romans of every social group. Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom is an essential resource for courses on Roman social history and Roman law as a historical phenomenon.

Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences brings together the voices of those who make productions of Shakespeare come to life. It shines a spotlight on the relationship between actors and audiences and explores the interplay that makes each performance unique. We know much about theatre in Shakespeare's time but very little about the audiences who attended his plays. Even today the audience's voice remains largely ignored. This volume places the role of the audience at the centre of how we understand Shakespeare in performance. Part One offers an overview of the best current audience research and provides a critical framework for the interviews and testimony of leading actors, theatre makers and audience members that follow in Part Two, including Juliet Stevenson and Emma Rice. Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences offers a fascinating insight into the world of theatre production and of the relationship between actor and audience that lies at the heart of theatre-making.

Actors and Audiences explores the exchanges between those on and off the stage that fill the atmosphere with energy and vitality. Caroline Heim utilises the concept of "electric air" to describe this phenomenon and discuss the charge of emotional electricity that heightens the audience’s senses in the theatre. In order to understand this electric air, Heim draws from in-depth interviews with 79 professional audience members and 22 international stage and screen actors in the United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany. Tapping into the growing interest in empirical studies of the audience, this book documents experiences from three productions – The Encounter, Heisenberg and Hunger. Peer Gynt – to describe the nature of these conversations. The interviews disclose essential elements: transference, identification, projection, double consciousness, presence, stage fright and the suspension of disbelief. Ultimately Heim reveals that the heart of theatre is the relationship between those on- and off-stage, the way in which emotions and words create psychological conversations that pass through the fourth wall into an "in-between space," and the resulting electric air. A fascinating introduction to a unique subject, this book provides a close examination of actor and audience perspectives, which is essential reading for students and academics of Theatre, Performance and Audience Studies.

Play Readings: A Complete Guide for Theatre Practitioners demystifies the standards and protocols of a play reading, demonstrating how to create effective and evocative readings for those new to or inexperienced with the genre. It examines all of the essential considerations involved in readings, including the use of the venue, pre-reading preparations, playwright/director communication, editing/adapting stage directions, casting, using the limited rehearsal time effectively, simple "staging" suggestions, working with actors, handling complex stage directions, talkbacks, and limiting the use of props, costumes, and music. A variety of readings are covered, including readings of musicals, operas, and period plays, for comprehensive coverage of this increasingly prevalent production form.