Getting Together and Falling Apart: Applauding audiences

Abstract

Looking at recent and historic audiences, this article investigates the possibilities of participation in theatres which are provided by the synchronizing potential of applause. Applause is a negotiation of acknowledging and estimating a performance (in the sense of its success), and it is being produced by and authenticated through gestures. It is aimed at an object, an accomplishment, a performance, and at the same time at all the others who constitute an audience in that very moment of acclamation or disapproval. The article asks about the individual and/or collective quality of this action, being an expression of enthusiasm and a way of collective recognition with a collectivizing effect, especially effective in an organized form of clapping in 19th century Paris: the claque. Doing so, it becomes clear in how far the work spectators and listeners do is being subjected to a similar process of differentiation and refinement as the one the performers go through. Proposing to investigate a historically established, rather non emphatic concept of participation allows to put under scrutiny the ways in which participation is informed by synchronization and rhythmic differentiation. The idea of action (within the audience) at the intersection of moving and being moved is of central interest for this article's argument. Taking a closer look at the dynamics of (historical) audiences reveals the manifold options beyond passivity or activity which turns this odd singular into some sort of plurality, a collective divided many times in itself, constituting engagement with a performance between affirmation and difference, pleasure and critique. Thus, it becomes increasingly difficult to decide whether ‘progressive’, participatory performances are in fact enabling, while ‘conventional’ performances have the effect of something like a sedative.