This volume offers rare insights into the connection between young audiences and the performing arts. Based on studies of adolescent and post-adolescent audiences, ages 14 to 25, the book examines to what extent they are part of our society’s cultural conversation. It studies how these young people read and understand theatrical performance. It looks at what the educational components in their theatre literacy are, and what they make of the whole social event of theatre. It studies their views on the relationship between what they themselves decide and what others decide for them. The book uses qualitative and quantitative data collected in a six-year study carried out in the three largest Australian States, thirteen major performing arts companies, including the Sydney Opera House, three state theatre companies and three funding organisations. The book’s perspectives are derived from world-wide literature and company practices and its significance and ramifications are international. The book is written to be engaging and accessible to theatre professionals and lay readers interested in theatre, as well as scholars and researchers. “This extraordinary book thoroughly explains why young people (ages 14-25+) do and do not attend theatre into adulthood by delineating how three inter-linked factors (literacy, confidence, and etiquette) influence their decisions. Given that theatre happens inside spectators’ minds, the authors balance the theatre equation by focusing upon young spectators and thereby dispel numerous beliefs held by theatre artists and educators. Each clearly written chapter engages readers with astute insights and compelling examples of pertinent responses from young people, teachers, and theatre professionals. To stem the tide of decreasing theatre attendance, this highly useful book offers pragmatic strategies for artistic, educational, and marketing directors, as well as national theatre organizations and arts councils around the world. I have no doubt that its brilliantly conceived research, conducted across multiple contexts in Australia, will make a significant and original contribution to the profession of theatre on an international scale.” Jeanne Klein, University of Kansas, USA “Young Audiences, Theatre and the Cultural Conversation is a compelling and comprehensive study on attitudes and habits of youth theatre audiences by leading international scholars in the field. This benchmark study offers unique insights by and for theatre makers and administrators, theatre educators and researchers, schools, parents, teachers, students, audience members of all ages. A key strength within the book centers on the emphasis of the participant voices, particularly the voices of the youth. Youth voices, along with those of teachers and theatre artists, position the extensive field research front and center.” George Belliveau, The University of British Columbia, Canada

`This inspirational book, that cares passionately about the child's gaze, should be welcomed and cherished.' Tony Graham, Artistic Director, Unicorn Theatre --

What is the value of performing Shakespeare's plays for young people? Using interviews with theatre workers, rehearsal observations and workshops with young people, this book argues that, rather than promoting a range of pre-determined textual understandings of the plays, it is by trusting young people's experience of performances that they might gain most benefit. It argues that by privileging the meanings young people make of Shakespeare, new and exciting interpretations of his work might be found. Drawing on case studies from theatre companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company, Tiny Ninja Theatre Company and Company of Angels Theatre Company, Jan Wozniak shows how the collaboration and materiality of performance is central to empowering young people to engage with, enjoy and challenge Shakespeare.

How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)

This book is a journey into the dual territory of educational and theatrical settings. It advances the knowledge in these settings by touching upon provocative questions, by dealing with the limitations and challenging the new possibilities of theatre for young people. It is an attempt to bring intellectual rigor and some theoretical perspectives drawn from recent theatre and aesthetic theory to the field of theatre for young people.

This book explores the concept of audience engagement from a number of complementary perspectives, including cultural value, arts marketing, co-creation and digital engagement. It offers a critical review of the existing literature on audience research and engagement, and provides an overview of established and emerging methodologies deployed to undertake research with audiences. The book focusses on the performing arts, but draws from a rich diversity of academic fields to make the case for a radically interdisciplinary approach to audience research. The book’s underlying thesis is that at the heart of audience research there is a mutual exchange of value wherein audiences ideally play the role of strategic partners in the mission fulfilment of arts organisations. Illustrating how audiences have traditionally been side-lined, homogenised and vilified, it contends that the future paradigm of audience studies should be based on an engagement model, wherein audiences take their rightful place as subjects rather than objects of empirical research.

Are artists seismographs during processes of transformation? Is theatre a mirror of society? And how does it influence society offstage? To address these questions, this collection brings together analyses of cultural policy in post-apartheid South Africa and actors of the performing arts discussing political theatre and cultural activism. Case studies grant inside views of the State Theatre in Pretoria, the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, followed by a documentation of panel discussions on the Soweto Theatre. The texts collected here bring to the surface new faces and voices who advance the performing arts with their images and lexicons revolving around topics such as patriarchy, femicide and xenophobia.