New Theatre-Fans: Empirical Research Experience

Abstract

Global changes and challenges of the 21st century have significantly changed both the conditions for the social functioning of art and its audience. This has shifted the focus of contemporary research interests from creating a socio-cultural portrait of the viewer to the area of comprehending new forms of cultural consumption, the origins and drivers of cultural activity. These aspects of the socio-cultural dynamics of the theater audiences are discussed in this paper, which continues the publication of the results of a large-scale sociological study of the audience of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. Our interest is primarily due to the historically formed special perception of this theater by the public, which distinguishes the Moscow Art Theater from other theaters of the country. Basing on the empirical data of sociological polls of two types — in the theater auditorium and on the Internet — and using the methods of mathematical statistics, we identify those features that most characterize the modern theater audience and reflect fundamentally new trends in its cultural activity. We note the stratification of the theater audience on completely new qualitative grounds and the establishment of a new cultural phenomenon at the forefront of theatrical life — the online theater-fan. To answer the question about the existence of a certain “generic peculiarity” of the Moscow Art Theater audience, which in previous years embodied the legendary Moscow Art Theater tradition, we tried to identify the latent features of the audience that are not reducible to the traditional quantitative measurements of spectator activity. The findings of the study are unexpected. In some ways they disappoint, but at the same time they explain a lot in the current trends of cultural consumption. They supplement the theoretical landscape with empirical data on the qualitative and behavioral characteristics of the modern theater audience and its cultural activity, which is steadily drifting into the online space. Theoretically comprehending the results obtained we fit them into the broad context of international studies of cultural life. So, behind the particular features of specific audience groups, we can catch the manifestations of global cultural processes that determine the current sociodynamics of the audience of art.