Moving Spectators in Performing Spaces: The Auditorium Dislocated into the Stage, or Vice Versa

Abstract

In theatres, in most of cases, the audience is assigned to its seat, in a separate area from the stage; but many experiments in spectatorship suggest that it can be mobile, with the possible aim to make it active. Sometimes it follows a relevant composition, sometimes less convincing, questioning the space and the conventional separation between the auditorium and the stage. It often creates configurations that break with the constructions imposed by the theatres. Directors and stage designers are rearchitecting the venue or importing their own architecture that incorporates the audience into the scenography, following Artaud’s vision in Le Théâtre et son double (1938). Theatre architecture rarely offers such a morphological freedom between spectators and performers excepting 1960s and 1970s experiments. Depending on the context, what are the limits (or excesses) of the audience's appropriation of the stage? How do they integrate the performance, and how is this anticipated? What resonance do actual experiments have with theatrical architecture? May they lead to a renewal of the current stage space? Beginning with major examples of theatrical situations outside conventional venues, I explore, through some recent examples, how scenography meets architecture and how designers develop scenic devices that modify the audience's situation by inviting them to become part of the set. Finally, by means of comparative analysis and perspective, I will attempt to identify the ins and outs of these experiments to glimpse the extent to which today's theatres allow the development of these relational forms between spectators and performers.