Ontroend Goed push it and some people stop them

Although I left Audience feeling like I’d witnessed something wrong (and many might argue it was wrong) this piece remains so memorable that it has to be in my Edinburgh top five. Never have I seen a performance that so shook up the role and expectations of audience and highlighted the peculiar and potentially damaging relationship between audience and performer. This piece starkly presented ‘our’ lesser human qualities. In a personal way it made me think of my own weaknesses and it created a terror of being exposed. It was not just the camera close-ups or even the rifling through people’s belongings which was more exposing than you’d expect (we did not know this was going to happen). Rather it was the sense that we were in it too, that we were allowing something to take place and if asked to do something - would I find myself doing it?

At first you are really expecting them to snap out of it, you are plainly waiting for the punch line. The screen showing the audience’s faces captures this because many of us are smiling at the beginning, and then the smiles gradually and slowly drop (it's beautiful film footage). For a long time people are half smiling and this is a nervous way of blending in. I was deeply conscious of blending in because I didn’t want to be noticed and I also didn’t want to do something that could be used against me. The boy who slightly smirked during the girls’ ordeal (and smirking is ever such a normal audience reaction) was torn apart for doing that when the performer exposed it to everyone and played it back on the screen. I felt for him. This is a much worse experience to go through than the man who had his spare pair of underpants pulled out of his bag. It is the difference between being the victim and the bully. It is being unconsciously caught up in it, and then publicly condemned for doing so. It mnemonically harks back to footage of political mass hysteria and crowd conformity, pivotal moments in history that we easily assume alienation from...until now.

Photo by Reinhout Hiel, picture of the Audience Publicity Flyer (Ontroend Goed and Remarkable Arts)

Taunting, torturous and extremely upsetting, I would struggle to recommend anyone to see Audience, but on the other hand the experience jolts and provokes a lot of thought about the concept of theatre, of audience and of participation. It is incredibly insightful about human group behaviour and uses the audience to experiment with and undergo that enquiry. It makes you afraid of yourself. In hindsight it is funny to remember the woman who stood up and shouted ‘you bastards’ but there’s something admirable about her frankness. Unfortunately I can’t be totally sure I would always be able to stand up against something that I am conditioned not to stand against. It is easy to use the context of theatre to protect our own involvement or lack of involvement but how far can a performance go before someone intervenes.

Ontroend Goed push it and some people stop them. There are the women who said they would open their legs on behalf of the other woman who didn’t want to, ‘would that be okay' and people actually putting their hands up and asking ‘could we please move on to the next part’? These provoked and challenging audience responses are absolutely part of what the piece disputes. But nobody left. At the end some people clapped and some didn't but nobody left until the very end... Yet we could have.