You will spend more of this course watching than performing, and watching is a skill — not a rest between turns. An artist’s first move as an audience member is to describe before judging: not “that was good” but “the tallest figure was turned away from the group, and everyone else was looking at her”. Description sees choices — levels, focus, stillness, a shift in status — and choices can be discussed, borrowed, and made differently next time. Judgement only sees talent, and talent is the least interesting thing on any stage.
Questions worth arguing about
- “That was good” and “that was boring” both end conversations. What is the most useful thing an audience member has ever said to you about your work — and what made it useful?
- Is it possible to describe a performance with no judgement hiding in the description? Try it with the last thing our class watched, and let the others hunt for the smuggled verdict.
- We usually treat theatre etiquette as rules — sit still, phone away, applaud. What changes if you treat it instead as generosity toward someone taking a risk? Which rules survive that reframing, and which turn out to be only habits?
- An audience can lift a scene or sink it without making a sound. What have you felt from an audience while performing — and what, exactly, were they doing?
- When something goes wrong on stage, what does the audience owe the performer in that moment?
Every task in this course makes you an audience many more times than a performer, so this skill gets more practice than any other. Use the describe-first habit in class discussion, in your Drama Journal, and in anything you write for Writing About Drama — naming choices before judging them is the whole trick of that page too.
Curriculum connection
C3.3
demonstrate an understanding of theatre and audience etiquette, in both classroom and formal performance contexts (e.g., listen attentively during school performances and assemblies)
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B1.3
identify aesthetic and technical aspects of drama works and explain how they help achieve specific dramatic purposes (e.g., write a report outlining the technical and aesthetic strengths of a peer’s presentation, using appropriate terminology; describe how basic stagecraft has been applied in a drama; identify and explain or justify their own and others’ aesthetic decisions using journals, checklists, or rubrics)
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C3.3
demonstrate an understanding of theatre and audience etiquette, in both classroom and formal performance contexts (e.g., listen attentively during school performances and assemblies)
Link to original