Getting Together and Falling Apart Applauding audiences + Black. [Applause.] applauding? Are we rehearsing applause? Are we You do not hear anything, but you see six to rehearse applause? performers bowing, showing facial expressions of happy relief, moving one after the other Applause, you could say, is a negotiation of towards the apron in slow motion, bowing again acknowledging and estimating a performance (in and retreating into the line of six. Then, one of the sense of its success), and it is being produced them says: ‘We were doing it for you’. by and authenticated through gestures which sum up that effect we come to call applause. Ivana Müller’s Playing Ensemble Again and It is aimed at an object, an accomplishment, a 1 Premiere Leuven, Again (2008)1 enlarges and prolongs that very performance, and at the same time at all the Belgium/Playground moment of the performance when – at first others who constitute an audience in that very Festival, STUK, October 31, 2008. Concept, glance – the performance comes to an end and moment of acclamation or disapproval. choreography and the audience is asked to react to it, be it with Applause is a collective gesture. Try to direction: Ivana Müller; Performers: Katja Dreyer, acclamation or with objection. The fringe or applaud as an individual; it might feel rather Karen Røise Kielland, margin of the performance which still belongs to as if you quote applause, and you will not be Bojana Mladenovic, Pedro Inês, Daniel the performative setting but adheres to different able to sustain it for a very long time. Applause Almgren-Recén, Rodrigo rules, has come to be the most important functions in a collective, and it produces Sobarzo; Text: Ivana Müller, Bill Aitchison occasion for audiences to participate, if in a very collectives. It is an action which at the same time and the performers; specific and arguably limited way: by applauding, already is a re-action calling for other reactions. Lighting design and technique: Martin booing or refusing to do any of these. At the Gestures of applause are not only visible Kaffarnik; Sound design: beginning of Müller’s piece, we are deprived of bodily movements, but produce audible effects Viljam Nybacka; Artistic advise: the very sound and action of applause, and I do as well. They use the hand like an instrument Bill Aitchison. A video not feel myself in the position nor in the mood for producing sound, and can be accompanied trailer of the performance can be to fill in. Thus I am put in a strange position by other actions, visible or audible, like booing, accessed at http://www. of asymmetry between the unambiguous encores, crying, laughter etc. Clapping functions ivanamuller.com/videos/. All quotes from the situation I see and the insecure role I face as as transmission of information and affect performance according an audience member. Am I implicated in this through space, and its temporal horizon is to my notes during the performance from scene of conventional curtain calls and expected essentially rhythmical, has a certain duration October 23, 2009. applause? What kind of participation am I and requires repetition in order to be readable allocated in (not) applauding? Can I synchronize as applause. The gestures of clapping can be myself to an imaginary applause and become differentiated and reinforced through temporal ‘audience’ – at the same time part of an imagined means; amplification, multiplication and audience and of the one which inevitably duration produce intensity. comes into being during that evening and while Proposing to investigate a historically 12 Performance Research 16(3), pp.12-18 © Taylor & Francis Ltd 2011 DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2011.606021 established, rather non emphatic concept of sense of the ‘emancipated spectator’, (Rancière, participation – theatrical applause – allows to put 2008) but also all kinds of bodily actions, kinetic under scrutiny the ways in which participation and verbal interventions (applause, booing, is informed by synchronization and rhythmic cheering, shouting, not to speak of wandering differentiation. The idea of action (within around, eating, bringing your MP3-player to the audience) at the intersection of moving the performance) make it impossible to speak and being moved is of central interest for my about spectators as either passive or active. argument which examines the possibilities of Our understanding of the ‘passivity’ of the participation within the framework of theatre audience has been ideologically impregnated and the conventions of audience behaviour. by Wagnerian and, later on, naturalist theories Such a concept of action cannot be of spectatorship which cannot be claimed as a developed without taking into account the performative reality at any time. Taking a closer intrinsic interrelatedness of ‘performers’ look at the dynamics of (historical) audiences 2 and ‘spectators’/’listeners’. There is no such reveals the manifold options beyond passivity 2 This resonates the way in thing as an achievement of the performers or activity which turns this odd singular into which processes between stage and auditorium are when separated from its counterpart, that of some sort of plurality, a collective divided being addressed through Getting Together & Falling Apart the audience members, and it is the specific many times in itself, constituting engagement the model of a ‘feedback loop’ by Erika Fischer- achievement of those who perceive which I am with a performance between affirmation and Lichte. According to especially interested in. I would like to show difference, pleasure and critique. Thus, it Fischer-Lichte, the ‘opposition between acting in how far the work spectators and listeners becomes increasingly difficult to decide whether and observing collapses’ do is being subjected to a similar process of ‘progressive’, participatory performances are in (Fischer-Lichte, 2008: 59). As ‘perceiving subjects’, differentiation and refinement as the one the fact enabling, while ‘traditional’ performances spectators act by doing performers go through. have the effect of something like a sedative. certains things and by what is happening to them. When arguing that applause turns a spectator/ Participating through applause, one could add, (This latter aspect – central listener into an audience member, I am referring makes an excellent case for the need and the to me – is not explicit in the to a concept of collective not to be misunderstood difficulty to differentiate between immersion and English translation of this passage (cf. Fischer-Lichte, as a unity or an institution, but rather a temporal participation: participation requires decision- 2004: 100).) gathering of individuals, experiencing the making, while immersion does not allow such a effect of synchronization and proximity to distance and liberty. others for a limited time. Participation, in this sense, comes into being by moving and being HISTORIES OF CLAPPING AND CLAPPERS moved and exceeds the active – passive binary. This latter operation implies a much too easy During the 19th century, clapping advanced to judgment about theatre audiences associated the preferred gesture of affirmative participation with quietly sitting in their seats, being in the performing arts. Besides that, common completely concentrated and absorbed by the utterances of acclamation or rejection were spectacle unfolding before their eyes (‘passive’) calling actors by their names, calling for encores, as opposed to a notion of the audience related to hissing, coughing, knocking, stamping one’s feet, performative practices beyond institutionalized, or heckling (cf. Primavesi, 2008: 363). fourth-wall theatre which would imply mobile The history of being an audience is quite a spectators, more loosely engaged with the action recent one, if it is understood as the history (or more directly, i.e. bodily involved by that: of attentive listening and watching, at least ‘active’). Already historically, it would not have if you restrict perceptive attention to actions been possible to address a theatre audience as performed on the stage or on the music podium. passive in the sense mentioned above. Not only What we know as the perceptive mode of silence interpretation and translation in Rancière’s and stillness, may be called an invention of 13 Brandl-Risi Afl]jagjg^YfGh]jY:gp Yll`]HYjakGh jY 9[Y\ ea]jgqYd]\] emkaim]$Jm]D]H]d]la]j!$ lithograph after Eugène Lami, 1842. the nineteenth century (or, more precisely, of in a decidedly economy-driven environment, late eighteenth century Vienna). For quite a not only regarding the attention economies long time though, this new mode of attending of listeners/spectators, but very specifically performances competed with what could be the professionalization of performers and called a multifaceted attention to partners in a the subjection of appearing on a stage to the conversation, interesting guests and actions on mechanisms of the market. And it seems to the stage or the podium which was rather usual be no coincidence that clapping became the until far into the nineteenth century. In Peter predominant mode of acclamation at the high Szendy’s description, the new bourgeouis ritual time of the virtuoso performer. of attending concerts allows an experience of Vladimir Jankélévitch, the philosopher and listening and watching in a bifold way: listening Liszt scholar, identifies the transmission as listening to what is being performed, but between performer and listener/spectator by also as watching how others (and oneself) pointing to their fundamental