Your job is to describe a live event, with the venue, the performers and the audience—tics,
mannerisms, customs—all part of your consideration. You get to choose to position yourself as
narrator as a participant or as a spectator, to use Dave Hickey’s terms. While I want to know
about the show itself, you will also account for the audience and your own role in the audience.
That is, you will tell us about the show via the audience.
o Remember to describe the venue—how big, how crowded, the kind of seating, how lit,
different types in different seats, et cetera. These are the who, what, where, when of
journalism. Crucial.
o Also consider the questions we’ve entertained with Hickey and Cunningham, about the
lines between audience and artist, participants and spectators.
o Use all the things you learned in earlier essays—for example, to make your own reaction
and voice part of the piece (reaction); to home in on details (ah, the spice of specificity!); to
show how “abstract” elements such as the shape and size of the performance space, the size
and density of the crowd, the lighting, the acoustics, shaped the experience (abstraction); to
use metaphors; and of course to notice the audience and the effect they have on you, on other
audience members, and on the performers.
o Finally, remember this is a story more than an essay. I recommend shaping it as a series of
scenes, or episodes, more than as a series of points, or arguments.
I have provided details & scenes from my own time at a live event I attended. with that you can get an idea of the event & fill in the blanks. You can stretch the truth, & add anything that seems fitting. Thanks.
