Audience

Synopsis

Ontroerend Goed have a reputation for playing around with its audience. Throughout the Personal Trilogy (The Smile Off Your Face, Internal & A Game of You), all theatrical action was centred around the spectator. Audiences were singled out, touched, directed, mirrored, confronted with other audience members and challenged to explore their boundaries. In Teenage Riot, the company projected audiences onto a white box and virtually pelted them with tomatoes. In Audience, they highlight the audience again, playing the part they’re most familiar with: the audience. In Audience, armed with a camera and backed by a screen, Ontroerend Goed register every move the audience makes, instils thoughts into their minds and takes a sneak through their wardrobe. The audience is warmed up and taught how to applaud differently. It’s tested how strongly people stick together and how susceptible they are to group manipulation. Though you always know it’s a game, how far will you get carried away? Audience doesn’t address us as an individual, but as a group. The performance shifts the focus from the stage to the seats - to you. Why did you gather here? Why do you form an audience? Where does that come from and how does it actually work? Inspired by analyses of mass behaviour, management-techniques and rhetorical tricks, Audience creates an experience somewhere between euphoria and aloofness.

Our Review:

12 December 2011

The buzz around Ontroerend Goed's Audience at Soho Theatre is palpable. Quite apart from the genuinely excited crowd outside the theatre on Friday night, people have been talking about it since this year's Edinburgh Fringe. This is the type of show that divides theatregoers into two distinct camps; those who buy it, and those who don't.

Turning the focus on the, ahem, audience from the very moment that we step into the theatre, the show looks at notions of collective responsibility, audience behaviour and audience expectation. This all sounds a bit dry and academic but the style of production is very whizzy and achingly post-modern; video screen, quicker cuts than MTV and an extensive use of a camcorder.

Actors sit amongst us in the stalls bringing an excitement that is laced with the tiniest amount of fear - what are they going to do?

The answer to that is simple - this is a slight confection, a lot of sound and well edited fury signifyi...

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