Audience
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An audience is the/a group of people who participate in and experience or encounter a work of art, literature, theatre, music or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art, with some kinds inviting overt audience participation and others allowing only modest clapping and criticism and reception.
One of the most well-known examples of popular Audience Participation is the motion picture The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its earlier stage incarnation The Rocky Horror Show. The Audience Participation elements are often seen as the most important part of the picture, to the extent that the audio options on the DVD version include the option of callbacks being included in the audio.
A theatrical adventure called Tamara, set in post-WWII Italy, in which audience members trailed cast members around many rooms in a Victorian house, seeing only a portion of the show each time they attended launched a new level of audience participation.
Now murder mysteries and interactive comedies like Tony and Tina's Wedding have extended the participation of audiences even further. Both often entail endowing members of the audience either as members of the family or as suspects. Audience members may engage in conversation with the cast, breaking the fourth wall entirely. They may be encouraged to dance with members of the cast, or to step into roles of missing performers.