The Space

The physical size and position of the audience.

Is the audience seated or standing?

Is the audience moving?

In what direction does the audience focus?

What is the distance between audience and performance area?

Does the audience enter the performance area?

Is the Audience Moving?

In theatre history, the most obvious era when the audience moved was during the medieval age of Europe, specifically when attending the passion plays. Engaged in a carnival type arrangement, the patron controlled his or her pace and even where he walked as he or she walked from mansion to mansion. The task of theatre artist/engineers at each mansion was to gain the patron's attention and hold it from the beginning of the story to its end before the patron moved on. One can speculate that perhaps for this purpose, special effects became magical, realistic, and often gory during this time.

Museums have the same challenge. Because the patron moves from one space to another and controls where and when he or she walks, the task is to clearly manipulate focus. Often, this is done with lighting, but museums are becoming more and more "hands on", using tactile features to keep the patron engaged.

Theme parks, on the other hand, tend to take control away from the patrons. People are forced to sit in a moving vehicle that determines what they see and when. The task here, then, is to keep the patron constantly entertained. Often, the theme park uses a chronological approach to storytelling as the way to keep attention, although more creative ways may be on the horizon.