Captive Audience

Arts organizations and individual artists employ a variety of different techniques for soliciting audience feedback about their work. The most commonly and innocuous method involves giving out audience surveys during a show or at an exhibition or asking people to complete questionnaires online, sometimes in return for entry into a draw for free tickets or a backstage tour or somesuch.

On occasion, particularly in a live performance or movie test-screening scenario, groups and artists will ask audiences if they'd like to participate in a post-show discussion about the work. I don't generally find these sorts of conversations to be very effective, particularly in the U.S., as audiences tend to be very polite here and only seem to say flattering things -- at least to the artists' faces.

Over the weekend, an artist whose solo show I experienced went a stage further: He put the entire audience on the spot immediately after his performance. Providing feedback was apparently required of everyone who turned up to see the show.

It wasn't a comfortable experience and I kind of felt hijacked. For one thing, I didn't know until I arrived at the theatre that evening that I would be experiencing a preview rather than a full performance of the show. The fact certainly wasn't stated in any of the press materials or on the theatre company's website. For another, it wasn't until after the applause at the end that the artist strode back on immediately and insisted on having a pow-wow with everyone in the room about his work. Leaving wasn't an option.

While soliciting feedback in this way seems to me to alienate audiences more than draw them to you, I'm not sure this approach was useful for the artist either. No one in the room had time to collect their thoughts. And those that did weren't about to say anything constructive. What happened was that we all sat there for about ten tense minutes with the artist sitting before us in a chair. He asked a few questions and got mumbled responses. A couple of audience members made platitudinous comments. Then, when it seemed like the conversation wasn't going to take off in any meaningful way, the artist thankfully excused us and let us out.

I'm hard-pressed to think of a more ineffective way of getting feedback from an audience. Surveys seem much more productive in comparison. If I had been the artist, I would have a) warned people properly in advance that they would be attending a preview and that I would be soliciting their feedback, and b) simply left a pile of business cards on a table after the show with a quick announcement asking people to send an email or call with comments in the coming days. I certainly wouldn't have tried to engage theatregoers in a critical conversation immediately after the show without giving them the option to leave.