Process and Procedure

This chapter sets out an initial theoretical framework for the analysis of audience participatory theatre, drawing on ideas from Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis, and supplementing his terms with ideas from Pierre Bourdieu and Hans-Georg Gadamer, to give this theory a broader capacity to address difference in response and in the accessibility of invitations. Three questions animate the chapter, relating the participant’s agency to the practicalities of devising, facilitating, and taking part in an audience participatory performance. These three questions represent areas of uncertainty in the understanding of interactive artworks when we consider them alongside more conventional works. The questions are: Terms, including ‘procedural authorship’, ‘invitation’, and ‘horizon of participation’, are proposed for tackling these questions. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of a Theatre in Education workshop performance by Armadillo Theatre, an event which both facilitates and manipulates participant agency.