performance ii: audience and embodiment 181
that audiences will observe them. Performers are also disposed to modify
what they do in response to the reactions of an observing audience” (52).
Hamilton is not denying that one can find parallel phenomena in the other
performing arts. His claim is, rather, that the ability to engage in this way
with an audience is an essential part of doing theater, whereas it is not, in the
same way, an essential part of performing music or dance.
Unlike Thom and Osipovich, however, Hamilton doesn’t think that
the presence of an actual audience is necessary if there is to be theatrical
performance. This is because, as the first of the quoted passages indicates,
he understands the distinctively social character of theater in terms of how
theatrical performances are generally presented and received, and the kinds
of goals they generally have. As just noted, theatrical performers take their
craft to involve the ability to engage with an audience, but the craft can still
be exercised even if no actual audience is attending. What matters, we might
say, is whether expectations about an intended audience guide the actions of
the actors. But theatrical performers’ expectations as to how their actions
will be received by their intended audience reflect their understanding of
the distinctive kinds of interactions between performers and audience char-
acteristic of theater. It is the nature of these interactions that distinguishes
the very idea of engaging in theater “for an audience” from the very idea of
engaging in music and dance “for an audience.”
2 Audience Response
We asked in the previous section whether performance requires an attend-
ing audience. But “attending” here is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can
refer to the physical presence of an audience in the location where the per-
formance is taking place. In this sense, Berthold and Magda are an attending
audience at the performance-event taking place on stage in the provincial
theater – they are “in attendance” at that event. But for an audience to play
its part as an audience, it must not only attend but also attend to what is
being presented. It is reasonable to assume that members of an audience for
an artistic performance who are there of their own choosing – rather than,
say, being dragged there by friends interested in their cultural education! –
have a predisposition to attend to what is presented. For they are presumably
interested in getting from the performance whatever the performers have to
offer, and this requires attending to it. Thus performers can usually expect
that the audience will take an interest in what they do, and, indeed, an inter-
est informed by some understanding of the kind of thing they are doing. But
this expectation does not absolve them from a responsibility to present to
the audience something that will engage this interest and thereby sustain the