PERFORMANCE PARTICIPANT RELATIONSHIP

Fatih YARŞI

There is no doubt that art has always created a level of relationship with its onlooker, viewer or participant, which it has positioned in front of it with all its disciplines. Sometimes, even if this is fulfilled only by the purely passive structure of the audience, the situation is quite different in the world of our age anymore. Cinema recreates its own audience in a new form of relationship with at an unprecedented pace of technology, while sculptural art cares more about the mostly singular audience in iconic structures, where rational murmurs echo. Musical art has no difficulty in reaching stacks of millions by creating its multi-layered compositions in digital forms, without the need for a single instrument. Examples can be reproduced sequentially, of course, but the main theme of this summary study is to mention that the “audience” of the Aristotelian theater was reshaped neither by historical avant-garde movements nor by the socio-philosophical approaches of theorists such as Brecht, Artoud, Grotowski, Boal. Basically, it will be an attempt to explain how the contemporary world reaches “participation” by redrawing the boundaries of the audience with performance art.

The 20^th century was the beginning of an era in which both technological and artistic and all other vital developments were experienced intensively and new inventions were put forward in many subjects. This is the period when civilization and cultural development reach very different dimensions and new materials and possibilities begin to be used. During this period, we can see that expression was shaped by different stylistic and staging approaches in the European Theater. Perhaps one of the most distinctive features of the twentieth century is its polyphony. The audacious arena of the art world, where different disciplines are articulated with each other, which often comes across interdisciplinary works, has tried to attract the audience to the center as much as possible.

The participatory individual structure created by the public spaces of antiquity evolved into the structure of society divided into classes by the suppressive techniques of political and economic factors, while of course it was very effective in shaping the audience of art, its capital and its architecture. Fulfilling the thematic requirements of the classical style, the frame scene also served to keep the audience, called the receptionist (a person who can understand with open consciousness.), in a rather passive manner in the face of the bright and charming glow of the scene, leaving the onlooker in the dark. The new theatre also needed new stage types where it positioned its audience in a different areas of consciousness.

The theater of the new century, which attempted to reposition its audience with the pains of changing and transformation, sought to transfer the audience from silent fatalistics to willful questioning crowds. Modern theater also saw the necessity of creating new spaces for itself, without ignoring spatial tensions. Compressed into solid geometric spaces, the theater has made an effort to make both its artist and audience more free, along with different theatrical forms. Undoubtedly, the change of the audience is also inevitable and necessary in the development of new theatrical thinking. Today, the audience is at a critical point for the formation of consciousness, which we can call Contemporary Theater. Because now one of the most important components of the play is the audience. As Roland Barthes notes in his theory of the “death of the author”, the reception of the work of art and communication with the work of art are entirely left to the audience.

Keywords: Performance; Participant; Audience; Theatre; Art