Playwriting and the Craft of Audience Participation

This Element investigates how playwrights can employ text-based strategies to facilitate audience participation in performance. It looks to contemporary discourse in the field of applied theatre to suggest principles the creator of a participatory work may employ to support the creation of a performance text which invites, and is responsive to, contributions from the audience. This Element offers analysis of works by playwrights Tim Crouch, Nassim Soleimanpour, Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe, all of whom experiment with text-based modalities to position the audience as co-creators in performance. It offers the insights gained from the author through their own experience of writing and staging a participatory performance. This Element draws upon ideas on care, relationality and affect to propose a care-centred model of playwriting which fosters an inclusive and accessible experience of co-creation in performance.