The Sound of the Audience is an experimental project created by Forsøgsstationen in the 2016/17 season, as a micro event under the EU project Caravan Next; a large European artistic and social collaboration project with Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium – Odin Teatret from Holstebro as initiator. This project focuses on bringing together diverse groups of people from a local community through artistic activities to promote a sense of community, cohesion and identity.

The full project report is available online in Danish(PDF) and English(PDF)

The experimental project has chosen to focus on the audience’s sonic identity in the theater, inspired by Vsevolod Meyerhold’s sound studies of the audience and developed by theater professionals and musicians in collaboration with 40 residents from Vesterbro and Copenhagen. For six months, a mixed group of citizens from different backgrounds and ages developed and rehearsed a two-act audio work with a conductor, based entirely on the sounds/actions of the audience in the theater.

The first act is based on studies of audience sounds in Copenhagen theaters in the fall of 2016 (rattling candy bags, shifting legs, sighing, coughing….) and the second act as the audience sounded in a Russian theater in 1923 (shouting and screaming, singing, fighting, laughter….).

The finished sound work, a different and subtle concert, was presented over 4 days during the theater festival CPH Stage at Forsøgsstationen and The Royal Danish Theatre. Here the audience meets the audience. It gives the audience a voice and finally the opportunity to hear themselves. Here we take the temperature of the audience’s identity and at the same time provide the opportunity to break the usual framework for so-called correct behavior in the theater.

Watch an 8-minute video about the project here.

Conductor: Erik Jakobsson
Instructor: Lotte Faarup
Production Manager: Øyvind Kirchhoff
Administration: Rikke Jeppesen Rod
PR, recruitment: Jakob Dahn
Production Assistant: Mejse Vedel
Video: Helle Lyshøj
Artistic direction: Lotte Faarup and Øyvind Kirchhoff

Here is the presentation of the choir participants: LINK

Additional references for the project are available here.

The Sound of the Audience is part of The Experimental Station’s basic research “The Collective Power” – audience development in an artistic context. Here we focus on the audience’s physical, aural, sensory and intuitive ability to absorb an artistic work, what expressions it can create and how those expressions can influence the artistic format of the work. Basically, with these experiments we want to get closer to understanding the identity of the audience in the exchange with the theater and the conversation that takes place.

The experiment “Total Theater for Children” (2013), which examined children’s physical liberation in the theater, was held under “The Collective Power”, and future experimental projects are planned under the themes: “The Common Unconscious” (audience and time formats) and “From Consumption to Barter” (development of barter between the theater and the audience).

Contact persons and trial managers: Lotte Faarup and Øyvind Kirchhoff

The sound of the audience is supported by the EU, Tuborgfondet and Vesterbro Lokaludvalg.