Meaningful agency in participatory performance
A contextual approach
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21721989 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Astrid Breel (0000-0001-6262-7413, Bath Spa University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-44 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-02 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Theatre and Performance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-2761 • E-ISSN: 2040-0616 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14682761.2024.2391210 |
| OpenAlex | W4401910780 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 41 |
Agency is a significant concept in participatory performance: as a participant you are able to take actions that affect the direction or outcome of (part of) the performance and this ability is a key element of the work’s meaning. Contemporary discourse on participatory performance conflates two perspectives of agency: agentive behaviour (where a participant carries out an action that looks to an observer as if they have made a decision) and the experience of agency (as articulated by the participant themselves). However, my original audience research demonstrates that the instances of observed agentive behaviour significantly outnumber the articulations of experienced agency by participants. A new and more nuanced perspective is necessary to understand how agency becomes meaningful in the context of participation. This article sets out an innovative contextual approach to agency, combining theoretical perspectives from cognitive philosophy and phenomenology with insights from original audience research to create the necessary multi-dimensional perspective. In this article, I draw on empirical audience research on 94 participants of Early Days (of a Better Nation) by Coney (2014) to illustrate this relational and contextual approach
Citizen journalism · Process management · Social science · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Engineering · Free Will and Agency · Management and Organizational Studies
Affective Performance and Cognitive Science
Conscious Will and Responsibility
Locating the Audience
Cognition in the Globe
Applied Drama
Effective Intentions
Multiple aspects in the sense of agency
Conscious intention and motor cognition
The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations
The experience of agency
Fair Play — Art, Performance and Neoliberalism
The Phenomenological Mind
Multimedia Performance
Hamlet on the Holodeck
Essays on Actions and Events
The Embodied Mind
Narrators and comparators
From participatory sense-making to language
The Phenomenology of Agency
The Natural Philosophy of Agency
| Highly cited | No |
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