Buying Back Attention

I was recently in Boorloo, Perth to attend the Australian Performing Arts Market, where something happened that felt strangely new. 

A debate was held. The topic: The Art Comes Before the Audience. 

Experienced voices from across the performing arts faced off. Each armed with new angles, counterpoints and rebuttals to the question. 

The arguments were delivered to perfection. Style, humour, drama, theatre.  

The power of the format was how it allowed us to argue against our own instincts. To play devil’s advocate. To abandon the ego and the moral compass and openly wrestle with the question. I think this might be a new must have for all sector gatherings. 

My only criticism of the debate was the sense that we were confusing the art with the artist. 

For me the art is the friction between things in society.  

Friction is not the right word.  
The right word is art but that would be confusing.  

It is the relationships and encounters between people, ideas, histories and bodies that create tension. That tension produces story. Possibility. 

The artist is not the art. The artist is the first audience member. The conduit that allows us to notice that friction. 

It is the role of the artist to construct the circumstances that bring forward the most vivid relationships between people. To build the frame through which we experience the work. 

While a fabulous debate, it was in fact an economics question masquerading as profound artistic integrity.  

We weren’t really debating art or audience. 

We were debating attention. 

Because beneath the surface the anxiety isn’t about creative freedom.  
It is about ticket sales and eyeballs. 

It is fair to say we now live in an attention economy, and live performance is losing market share.  

While Brecht was not competing with social media, his insight still holds. The audience should not disappear into the work. Society is engineered to hijack our attention. In such a world, theatre that merely sedates its audience cannot survive. It will lose. It is losing. 

This isn’t a farewell to live art. Quite the opposite. I wanted to remind myself that full attention is still possible. We practice it every day on the training floor. When someone wobbles 4 meters in the air. Attention sharpens instantly.  

This is what made the debate so engaging. Finally, we found the frame for the question of dwindling audiences that could harness our attention.  

So the question becomes: how do we bring that quality of attention into the theatre? 

Or out of it? 

As we speak we are making a show for the streets. A show for the people who are not expecting it. Where soft bodies press against hard concrete. Where the high stakes encounters of society are endlessly taking place.  

It is not fair to claim this departure from the theatre as an innovation. Blak performance as we know it today arguably comes from the streets. Theatre that lacked attention not because of the distraction of modern widgets but because mob weren't welcome in the ‘legitimate’ places constructed for theatrical purpose.  
The protests of Redfern. The Tent Embassy. The Freedom Ride. 

This kind of theatre was urgent. This kind of theatre inspired attention. This kind of theatre created the frame for the friction of the times.  

We are far from sure that the streets are the answer. But what is clear is that our time does not lack friction, and so we follow it. We wrestle with the frame that might make it visible.  The work must step from the stage directly into the path of attention.