| dc.description.abstract | Street performers have to create and manage their own performance events. This makes street
performance an ideal type of situation for studying how an audience is assembled and sustained in
practice. This thesis uses detailed video-based ethnographic analysis to investigate these processes
in street performances in Covent Garden, London. Drawing on the performance literature, the
role of the physical structure of the environment, the arrangement of physical objects within the
environment and the physical placement of people are all examined. The argument of the thesis is
that these analyses alone are insufficient to explain how an audience is established or sustained.
Rather, an audience is an ongoing interactional achievement built up through a structured sequence
of interactions between performers, passers-by and audience members. Through these interactions
performers get people’s attention, achieve the recognition that what is going on is a performance,
build a collective sense of audience membership, establish moral obligations to each other and
the performer, and train the audience how to respond. The interactional principles uncovered in
this thesis establish the audience as a social group worthy of studying in its own right, and are in
support of a multiparty human-human interaction approach to design for crowds and audiences | en_US |
