For almost forty years, the Dukes Theatre Company in Lancaster, England, has sited its
annual site-specific promenade performances in the city’s Williamson Park, an achievement
unsurpassed by any other U.K. theatre company. During those decades, audiences have
consistently returned, and some individuals have attended from the inaugural year of these
performances in 1987. The park location has contributed to the reasons behind the loyalty
shown by audiences, and this community amenity and the behaviours associated with a park
environment are particularly relevant to this thesis. Scholarship in site-specific performances
has addressed the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary practices site-specific companies
employ, and research has contributed to understanding how audiences engage with such
work. This study adds to that body of knowledge by investigating what opportunities for
engendering a shared reality are afforded by the performance practices of site-specific
promenade performances. Creating a shared reality helps people connect with others and
establishes and strengthens social relationships (Echterhoff et al., 2009). It requires
communicators to be motivated to create an interpersonal connection with others, and
essentially, those involved in the interaction would experience shared attention (Shteynberg,
2015). In shared attention, people are aware that others have been co-present, witnessing and
gaining knowledge of the event, object or something which has focused their attention. This
thesis provides evidence from my case study of The Dukes’ adaptation of The Hobbit (2016)
that the ambulatory nature of a multi-location performance heightens the audience experience
and encourages social interaction where people are motivated to make connections with
others through communicating their impressions of what they have just witnessed, conditions
necessary for shared reality to occur. Williamson Park's environment contributes to those
conditions with its unique geographical features, vistas, and the connotations a park evokes of
leisure experience.
| Date of Award | 4 Apr 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Supervisor | Nigel Fabb (Supervisor) & Yvette Taylor (Supervisor) |
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