Meaningful agency in participatory performance: a contextual approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Agency is a significant concept in participatory performance: as a participant you are able to take actions that affect the direction or outcome of (part of) the performance and this ability is a key element of the work’s meaning. Contemporary discourse on participatory performance conflates two perspectives of agency: agentive behaviour (where a participant carries out an action that looks to an observer as if they have made a decision) and the experience of agency (as articulated by the participant themselves). However, my original audience research demonstrates that the instances of observed agentive behaviour significantly outnumber the articulations of experienced agency by participants. A new and more nuanced perspective is necessary to understand how agency becomes meaningful in the context of participation. This article sets out an innovative contextual approach to agency, combining theoretical perspectives from cognitive philosophy and phenomenology with insights from original audience research to create the necessary multi-dimensional perspective. In this article, I draw on empirical audience research on 94 participants of Early Days (of a Better Nation) by Coney (2014) to illustrate this relational and contextual approach.