"Extended Audiences" will investigate the ways in which performances are seminal for the formation of temporal communities that both emerge from and transcend co-present theatrical communities. Issues of performance and audience involvement always have a temporal dimension; ephemeral as the moment of a recital or performance may seem, an audience’s engagement with the literary experience outlasts the actual event. We will investigate how the limited temporal and spatial experience of a reading or performance is transformed as the per­for­mance’s original confines are extended. Processes like these constitute temporal communi­ties of their own, involving not only the original audience and performers, but also people overhearing conversations in a city square, reading about the event in a court circular, seeing a photograph on Instagram, or watching a video on YouTube. Within such a chain of material and communicative transformations, continuity and discontinuity, presence and absence enter relations of enduring tension. While performances may, indeed, be ephemeral, their reception is capable of triggering long-term entanglements that resonate through space and time.

Participants

• Prof. Dr. Jürgen Brokoff
• Prof. Dr. Anne Fleig
• Prof. Dr. Karin Gludovatz
• Prof. Dr. Doris Kolesch (project lead)
• Prof. Dr. Annette Jael Lehmann
• Prof. Dr. Melanie Möller
• Dr. Ramona Mosse
• Kai Padberg
• Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat