Tactile Attention in One-to-One Performance: The effects of touch on participant experience

Abstract

This article details the perceptual effects of physical contact during one-to-one performance. It considers the impact of sustained touch between a solo performer and an audience participant on the experience of the event in terms of self-awareness, collaborative exchange, and feelings of agency. Based on qualitative empirical data, Esling examines how the invitations of both active and passive touch work to enhance tactile attention for the audience participant, evaluating the implications of this heightened awareness on the psychophysical and affective experience of a one-to-one encounter in a performative context. This research is based on comparative data generated through a Practice-Based Research framework designed to test empirically the effects of sense-specific manipulations in immersive, one-to-one performance. Based on the tactile dramaturgy of All Good Things (2013), a work by Canadian company Vertical City, Esling developed a micro-performance to be experienced by random audience participants either with or without physical contact. In the control performances, participants listened to a performer tell an affective narrative without touch, yet in close proximity. In intervention performances, the participant held hands and touched knees with the performer. In both scenarios, participants completed a brief interview and written survey immediately following their experience. This research contributes to knowledge about how physical contact—as a dramaturgical strategy—shapes feelings of agency, attention, affect and bodily awareness, and performer–participant connection in one-to-one performance.