'It was a cracker': Listening in to youth audiences, regional and urban, with show reports

'[I]t was a cracker of a show' - this is how Melbourne Theatre Company stage manager Lisette Drew described the school matinee performance of The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You (Violent Outburst) in her Show Report for the Theatre Royal, Hobart (5 June 2019). Such a comment, with its...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Australasian drama studies 2020-10 (77), p.244-272
Main Author: Trott, Abbie Victoria
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actors
Audiences
Cultural capital
Cultural differences
Discourse analysis
Dramatists
Ethics
Evaluation
Production and direction
Regionalism
Schools
Stage managers
Theater
Theater in art
Urban areas
Youth
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Summary:'[I]t was a cracker of a show' - this is how Melbourne Theatre Company stage manager Lisette Drew described the school matinee performance of The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You (Violent Outburst) in her Show Report for the Theatre Royal, Hobart (5 June 2019). Such a comment, with its enthusiastic rejoinder to the experience of watching a show from the sidelines, activates a question: what makes a show 'a cracker'? What sets off one show from another in terms of the level of sparking energy that it communicates? This article aims to investigate how creatively witnessing theatre-making from development, through rehearsal, production and into performance positions the stage manager as a little-explored expert on audience reception. Show Reports provided by Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) from their touring schools shows between 2017 and 2019, and an interview with Drew discussing her memories of audience responses to these performances, contribute to better understanding of the impact of theatre in young people's lives in regional Victoria.1 Using discourse analysis, I examine here the variations between regional and urban young audiences in the commentary available in these Show Reports, in order to suggest that they provide qualitative data of significance to audience research.
ISSN:0810-4123