Agency

Breel, A (2022) 'Agency.' In: Reason, M, Conner, L, Johanson, K and Walmsley, B, eds. Routledge companion to audiences and the performing arts. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 402-408. ISBN 9780367470753

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Abstract

The recent ‘participatory turn’ (Bishop 2012; White 2013) has led to a focus on audience agency in live performance, especially in work that directly engages its participants, and socially engaged art. This contribution is a provocation to think about audience and participant agency in more complex terms than work ‘giving’ agency to participants and propose contextual agency as a framework to better understand how agency becomes meaningful for audiences/participants. This framework differentiates between two types of agency (agency of engagement and narrative agency) and includes a spectrum of agentive actions that audiences might engage in. I propose that ‘conducting’ better describes the flow of agency within a performance; which not only respects that participants have agency as they enter but also enables a more nuanced understanding of how their acts take on meaning.

Item Type:	Book Chapter or Section
Note:	Part of the 'Audience Research' series.
Divisions:	Bath School of Music and Performing Arts Chancelry and Research Management
Date Deposited:	11 Apr 2022 11:27
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2023 17:47
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/14705

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