Talking about theatre: Audience development through dialogue

Taking as its starting point the cultural policy discussion of audience development, this article suggests that a focus on the audience’s experience of theatre performances is underdeveloped in the cultural policy debate which focuses either on reaching out to new target groups or on artistic quality. Through qualitative audience investigations, the article discusses how talking about theatre can serve as a method of investigating theatre experiences from an audience perspective, and thus provide knowledge which must be a pre-requisite both for theatres and for cultural politicians in search of a larger and broader audience. The analysis discusses audience experience with regard to the sensory, the artistic and the symbolic level of two specific performances, and at the same time it provides arguments for why talking about theatre is a useful tool for theatrical institutions in their work with audience development.