Audiences

This issue of Theater turns its gaze on one of performance€™s most essential but often neglected participants: the spectator. In an era of interactive media, streaming on-demand entertainment and fierce competition for shortening attention spans, the idea of what it means to be an audience member is in flux. The scholars and artists featured in this issue contest and expand traditional definitions of viewership as essentially passive. Incorporating various global perspectives, this issue also looks at some new forms of political and social performance that rely on mass audience participation. From urban performance in Bogot to flash mobs in New York City or Germany€™s halls of parliament to video chats with random partners by the luck of the €œspin€ on chatroulette.com, contributors attempt to identify who is watching, how, and why. Also featured in this issue is the first publication of the New York City Players€™ Ads, an experiment in live performance in which shadowy images evoke the absence of live performers, accompanied by an introduction by director and creator Richard Maxwell. Tom Sellar is Editor of Theater and Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy at the Yale School of Drama.