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Performance theory draws on these generalized qualities of spectatorship, some of which are true for other kinds of aesthetic experiences, and particularizes them. Surveying what performance theorists and theatre artists have to say about audience, chapters 2 and 3 reveal the complex interplaying processes involved in spectatorship. Herbert Blau (1990) points out the current state of alienation between performers and their audiences, while others pinpoint areas of potential struggle and resistance to the status quo. A spectator offered the opportunity to connect with performance as a coconstructor, rather than a consumer, can engage in processes of resistance, self-expression, collaboration, and memory and meaning making. Various performance movements, including avant-garde, political, popular, and applied theatre are all forms of performance that open up engagement and participation with the audience in various ways, and therefore are valuable models to position in relation to both mainstream performance and AIP curriculum (see Innes, 1993; Jakovljevic, 2002).
Chapter 4 suggests that this AIP curriculum in action can be understood more fully through the metaphor of dramatic chorus. The roles and functions of the ancient Greek chorus in relation to a drama can be effectively applied to students in relation to curriculum, and to spectators in relation to performance. Chorus members, students, and spectators all have the potential to “conspire” with the dramas, curricula, and performances they encounter. These conspiracies, or “breathings-together”, create spaces for dialogue with powerful forces. For Greek choruses, this is the opportunity to remind gods and royals that their actions will affect the whole society; for students, this is the chance to respond in critical and creative ways to the curriculum that shapes their learning; for spectators, this is the possibility of engaging at a deeper and more mindful level with culture and with one another, beyond mindless consumerism and isolating individualism.
The AIP curriculum theory that begins to emerge in chapter 5 considers the audience as coperformers, fully capable of moving from passivity into creative interaction with performance.