Acting WITH AUDIENCE

2/7/2018

We asked our very own Junior State Thespian Officer, Joseph, to describe his take on audiences. He discusses what he thinks the importance of an audience is, and gives some helpful tips for performing with the presence of an audience.

Performing vs. spectating

"Performing a play is different from watching a play because when you’re performing in a play, you are the character and you are the one feeling the adrenaline and the excitement of being a specific character. But, when you are watching the play, the feeling that you feel is suspense because you don’t know what’s going to happen next unless you’ve seen it before."

sharing an experience...

"When actors and audiences share a live theatre experience, it just becomes more entertaining for the audience and the actor/performer because neither of you know what will happen next. For example, in The Spelling Bee, the show is pure audience participation, and the audience member that is chosen to interact doesn’t know what will happen on stage and the performer doesn’t know the member’s reaction.

The audience is important because without the audience, there is no show: nobody to laugh, cry, or sing with you while the show is going on. It is just another practice. Without the audience, there is no point in performing a show because there is nobody there to appreciate it as much as the performer does.

A theatre production will communicate different messages to different people because of the audience’s lives. If you are watching a show about World War 2 it will affect a person who lived in that time in 1940 more than it will affect someone born in 1990."

a memory

"A time when I interacted with the audience was in The Spelling Bee when one of the performers called up a few people to do a spelling bee. An example is when one of the audience participants needed to spell “cow”. The audience participants were told to always ask for a definition and for that word to be used in a sentence. So when this person got told to spell “cow”, she was laughing because she knew that she needed to ask for the definition and a sentence. It is times like these when you really get to appreciate the audience for being really good sports."

Tips on performing

"Some tips for performing in front of an audience would be to always be yourself and the audience will love you. Also, if you have stage fright, you can always imagine the audience in their underwear.

Don’t want to see people in their underwear? Then look as far back into the audience as you can, chances are you can’t see them because the only light in the theatre is coming from the stage.

Acting with an audience is always a fun experience for both the performers and for the audience. Whenever you get chosen for audience participation, it will be a blast, and don’t forget to smile."