The idea always has been to forge artist and audience into one communal whole; but for many years and in most cases, there has been a distinct physical division separating the two. The artists perform on the stage to an audience out there in the seats.
In the late 1960s, several aggressively avant-garde groups, such as the Living Theater and the Performance Group, changed this arrangement by having their actors mingle, sometimes intimately and perilously, with audience members. At the time, this was considered radical stuff. Robert Brustein, the director and critic, called it exploring “the hidden links that exist between every successful work of art and the deep sensual life of every spectator.”
On a less esoteric level, this connection has been maintained in popular audience participation routines, in improvisational comedy clubs and in user-friendly theater productions, such as “Nicholas Nickleby,” in which actors chat with the customers before taking their places on stage.
Today, however, much of this once-experimental practice has been taken over by mass audience entertainments that get their spectators immersed in everything from mystery dinners to medieval banquets. The long-running “Shear Madness,” “Late Nite Catechism” and “Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding” pull in non-theatergoing, date-night customers who enjoy the jolly, informal interplay of performance. As Marilyn Abrams, co-producer of “Shear Madness” once said, in a bit of understatement, “We found that our audiences liked to get involved with what was going on.”
Perhaps this is just a variation on Jimmy Durante’s old saying that “Everybody wants to get into the act,” but the success of works that mix artists with spectators has not been lost on dance and theater companies eager to expand and involve their audiences.
Already on tap in the Chicago area for a Nov. 24 premiere at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie is something called “Grand Opening,” described as “an exciting, interactive romantic comedy” taking place in a nightclub setting, with audience members as participants in the show.
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Beyond such pop entertainments, performing groups are now looking at ways of bridging the old distance between artist and audience and making the spectators feel closely related to the art they have come to witness.
Dance has been in the forefront here. Last season at the old Dance Center of Columbia College, the choreographer H.T. Chen staged “Bian Dan,” a joyous communal piece for eight dancers and 21 plain citizens, from kids to senior citizens; and recently choreographer David Dorfman inaugurated the new Dance Center at 1306 S. Michigan Ave. with his “The Move Project,” using an ensemble of local community members.
One of the most artful examples of audience interaction came early this month with “Minus 16,” a company piece created by the Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin and presented in its American debut by Hubbard Street Dance of Chicago.
One segment of the dance offered individual solos, accompanied by tape-recorded autobiographical sound bites from the dancers. Another, exciting section found each of the 18 dancers going down the aisles and picking a partner from the spectators. The ensuing performance, with the dancers expertly adjusting themselves to the talents of the people they had brought on stage, was funny, charming and ultimately thrilling.
This kind of dancer-audience relationship, shrewdly introduced by Naharin, is interaction at its best. More than a tricky business or a broad and sometimes embarrassing joke on the customer, it makes the spectators feel, in a way they had never experienced before, a part of something that is exciting and fulfilling.
It makes them aware of artists as individuals, and it makes them become a part of the action.
That’s good business, and it’s also good art.