Theatre and its Audiences

Kate Craddock is the Founder and Festival Director of GIFT: Gateshead International Festival of Theatre, UK, an annual artist-led festival celebrating contemporary theatre. Since 2005, Kate has worked across academic roles and cultural sector contexts, and is regularly invited to speak as a panellist at international festivals. Kate was recipient of the Theatre Fellowship with the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme 2018/19.Helen Freshwater is Reader in Theatre & Performance at Newcastle University, UK. She is the author of Theatre & Audience (Methuen Drama, 2009) and Theatre Censorship in Britain: Silencing, Censure and Suppression (2009). Between 2017-2020 she was Co-I on ‘Understanding Audiences for the Contemporary Arts’, an AHRC-funded project.

• Acknowledgements Introduction: Conventions, Interruptions and Change1. Performance’s Place in Time: On Duration, Speed and Intervals2. Spatial Relationships: Exclusivity and Inclusivity3. Technologies, Connection and Copresence4. Honesty, Secrets and Lies: How Theatre Communicates with Audiences5. On the Present and Future Needs of Audiences: Care, Access and SustainabilityBibliographyIndex

Craddock and Freshwater write with a style that is deeply grounded in scholarship yet accessible to a broad readership. Their book is addressed not only to academics, but also to artists, producers, policy makers, and cultural workers. Most crucially, it centers the audience, not as data or demographics, but as a public to be welcomed, challenged, and reimagined, not simply spoken at.