E-ISSN 2281-4612 ISSN 2281-3993 Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy Vol 4 No 1 S2 April 2015 31 Audience-Oriented Forms of Performance in the 21st Century Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ayrin Ersöz Yildiz Technical University, Department of Music and Performing Arts, ayersoz@gmail.com, aersoz@yildiz.edu.tr Doi:10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n1s2p31 Abstract The use of space in the mainstream performing arts is based on the division of the acting and performing spaces with an imaginary wall. The sharp division of the space by this invisible conventional border, also called the fourth wall, originated from the fundamentally distinct role definitions assigned to the audience and the actors. On the other hand, especially since mid- twentieth century, due to the fast improvement in mass media technologies audiencing has widely shifted from the public space to the private space. Because of this shift the staging forms appropriate to the traditional space order became unresponsive to the needs of new acting and audiencing, and caused a search for alternative ways. In this respect, especially since the 1960’s there have been many experiments examining both the acting and the audiencing activity from every aspect. These experiments invited the audience again into the public space, in search of new ways in which the audience could take an active role in a dynamic audience field. In these forms of performance, passive audience positions are completely abandoned and the role of the audience is reconstructed as an active element of the work itself. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there is a new trend in the Western performing arts, which is based on a participatory, interactive and immersive performance approach. Especially in the immersive performance approach, the audience is invited to a multi-sensory experience. To the extent that they actively participate in the experience, they gain the freedom of creating different audiencing forms and even reconstructing the plot. In these kinds of forms, the audience is invited to almost a realistic experience in spaces constructed to create this realistic feeling. Providing a holistic perception and participation, this experience goes beyond the conventional audiencing forms based on the audio and visual senses, by addressing and stimulating the olfactory, gustatory, and tactile senses. It also allows the audience to participate in the movements of the performers as well as follow them in the almost realistically constructed performance spaces. As today’s audience is accustomed to being active players on the internet and creating worlds at their fingertips on virtual games, new narratives that bring together the audience and the performing arts are thus constructed. Keywords: audience, performing arts, performing space, immersive practices It is apparent that in performance-based arts, mainly theatre and dance, the conventional forms of expression and narratives are increasingly receiving less interest by the audience. In this, it is certain that new media produced through changes in technology are certainly of primary importance. Internet, with its features of the nonlinear structure of World Wide Web offering hyperlink possibilities, giving opportunities to be participatory and interactive, channelling to making comment contribution, is marked as a revolutionary medium of today. The character of this “deep media” that the internet creates is defined as immersive. (Rose, 2011: 2-3) Before these developments were reflected in the performing arts, there were clear cut definitions that determined some important features of performance as theatrical space and audiencing. The space in the mainstream performing art examples gives a clear placement for the performers and the audience. Theatre as problematized by McAuley “. . . consists of human beings in a defined space watched by other human beings, and it is this reality that constitutes the basic apparatus of theatre" (McAuley, 1999: 245). The theatrical reality here lies on the fact that there is a need for space where the audience and the performers meet in the live event, and in this space the already defined roles and their placements are assigned. This reality creates an imagined but also clear and unquestionable cut of the theatrical space, where the theatrical experience is shared by both parties, the performers and the audience in their definite placement of the space. This experience is possible on the previously negotiated casting of their roles; performers are there to act on the slightly elevated, lit platform, the stage; and the audience is seated across the stage in the dark auditorium watching and hearing the actions of the performers. Performers are acting in order to be seen, audience is silenced both vocally and physically in order to be able to see and hear everything on stage. In all mainstream theatre or opera house building around the world, we can see the audience sitting in the dark hall in the auditorium, facing one direction gazing the framed fictional world revealing itself in front of their eyes, in this fixed and atrophied position. This space mostly named as the proscenium stage “creates a theatre of illusion” with the tendency “to preserve the strong distinction between life and art…” Foster (1986: 60)